


Pilot Light

by raving_liberal



Series: Creation Myths [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Jessica Moore, Biting, Blow Jobs, Creampie, Dirty Talk, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, F/M, Getting Back Together, Hunters & Hunting, Infidelity, Jessica Moore Lives, Loud Sex, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Reunion Sex, Scars, Sibling Incest, Sparring, Supernatural Kink Bingo 2021, Threesome - F/M/M, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 12:08:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30122532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: Dean comes to Stanford for Sam. Sam makes him wait until Monday. While they wait, their past catches up to them.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore/Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Series: Creation Myths [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2217543
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38
Collections: SPN Kink Bingo 2021





	Pilot Light

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would look terrible if not for the patience and editing skill of david of oz. It wouldn't exist at all if geekyramblings hadn't suffered through being sent three paragraphs at a time over Discord.

Dean sits in the Impala for a long time, watching Sam and his blonde girlfriend move around the apartment. The smart call would be to go up there now and knock on the door, but the more Dean thinks about doing that, the harder he finds it to move. He’s nailed to the vinyl seat, staring at a familiar shadow, a body he knows as well as his own backlit by incandescent bulbs. If he could see Sam’s face, maybe this would be easier. From the alley where he’s parked, all he sees are broad shoulders and long arms. The kid got taller. He got bigger. Dean would still know him anywhere. 

The hours drag on, and one by one, the lights turn out in Sam’s apartment. _Get your ass up there_ , Dean chides himself. _Just knock on the damn door._ He rolls down the Impala’s windows and listens: nothing but the particular sound of California insects and the thump of bass in the distance, some other college kids partying hard on Halloween. Not Sammy, though. Always so responsible. He and his girl are in bed at a decent hour, lights out just past midnight.

Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe this is a fool’s errand. Dean’s burnt out on hunting alone, but he has other numbers to call. Caleb or Pastor Jim. Mike and Irwin both work the west coast. Hell, he could even use this as an excuse to look up Lee Webb if he wanted to. Dragging Sam back into it isn’t necessary. It’s selfish, and Dean knows it. Sam was right to get out, no matter how much it hurt Dean, and Dean let him be for two years after their last, misguided attempt at a reunion. Now, though, he can’t stand it anymore. He needs Sam. _Dad_ needs Sam.

What if Sam turns him away? Even worse, what if Sam rejects him completely, the way he had rejected Dad three years ago? What if he tells Dean his life is better without his big brother in it? What if he says nothing, but just stares at Dean with that hard, flinty look in his eyes, the one he used to get when Dad yelled at him? He wouldn’t, would he? Dean gave Sam plenty of reasons to be angry with him, but not to hate him. Not to reject him outright after everything. Dean’s stomach turns over. He needs a drink.

Eventually, Dean stops arguing with himself. He stops trying to rationalize or justify. He stops trying to bolster his courage. He rolls up the windows and gets out of the car, locking it behind him, and then creeps up the fire escape to Sam’s apartment. Kid’s definitely gone soft; the window isn’t locked, and Dean shimmies it open easily. He slips in through the window and spends a few moments just basking in the soft warmth and familiar smell of the apartment. Dean had always been a bloodhound when it came to Sam, and he could pick that scent out anywhere. 

He slides the window partially closed, but he misjudges the space and backs into the coffee table, knocking something over with a clatter. Dean freezes, listening. Nothing. He walks through the small living room, looking at the framed photographs and the little decorative touches. How much of this is the girlfriend and how much is Sam? Sam was never a decorator, but they never exactly stayed anywhere long enough for him to get the chance. A pang of guilt shoots through Dean’s chest. He should see about that drink before he wakes Sam.

Suddenly, Dean is grabbed from behind. He can barely make Sam’s features out in the dark, but he knows the kid’s fighting style. He blocks Sam’s kicks, Sam dodges his punches, and after only a few seconds, Dean has Sam pinned on his back to the floor. Even pinned, Sam struggles, and Dean only relishes it for a second before leaning forward enough for a faint beam of outside light to reveal his face to Sam.

“Whoa, easy, tiger,” Dean says, grinning down at Sam. Sam’s face contorts from anger into confusion as he blinks back up at his brother. 

“Dean?” Sam says. His chest rises and falls with heavy breaths. “You scared the crap out of me!”

“That’s ’cause you're out of practice,” Dean says, but as soon as the words come out, Sam rolls, flipping Dean over and reversing their positions and knocking the wind out of Dean. Dean laughs breathlessly. “Or not,” he adds, patting Sam’s arm. “Get off me.”

They help each other to their feet, giving each other a once-over in the dim light. Sam is taller, more so than Dean realized. He has to look up to his little brother now. He wonders if Sam notices. 

“Dean what the hell are you doing here?” Sam asks. He sounds surprised, but not angry, and some of the tension in Dean’s chest eases. Sam isn’t going to shove him right out the door without a conversation. He might even say yes to Dean’s request. 

“Well, I was lookin’ for a beer,” Dean says. He grabs Sam by the arms and gives him a little shake, unable to fight the big grin on his face. Two years since he’s seen Sam. He drinks in every detail he can make out, every new angle of Sam’s face, the feel of the muscles in Sam’s arms. Suddenly, a light flicks on, making Dean squint.

“Sam?” says a sleepy female voice from the doorway. The girlfriend. She’s prettier than Dean expected, with her long blonde curls and skimpy little sleep shorts. 

Sam’s demeanor changes, even the tone of his voice. “Jess, hey. Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica.”

“Wait, your brother Dean?” Jess asks. The tension eases even more. Sam mentioned him to Jess at least once. He hasn’t been here in California pretending he had no family at all, that Dean didn’t exist. 

“I love the Smurfs,” Dean says, nodding at Jess’s equally skimpy pajama top. She’s gorgeous, nearly Dean’s height, with great tits and long, tan legs. “You know, I gotta tell you: you are completely out of my brother’s league.” Behind him, Sam snorts his disbelief. 

“Just let me put something on,” Jess says, not defensive or amused. Dean thinks he might actually like her. 

“Oh no. No, I wouldn't dream of it, seriously.” Dean clicks his tongue in appreciation. He feels Sam tense up beside him. “Anyway I gotta borrow your boyfriend and talk about some private family business, but, uh, nice meeting you.” He turns to Sam, dismissing Jess so he and his brother can discuss the matter at hand. Sam doesn’t do the same, though. He stares, open-mouthed, at Jessica for a beat, then he squares up. He suddenly gets even taller.

“No,” Sam says, crossing the room to Jess and putting his arm around her. “No, whatever you want to say you can say it in front of her.” 

Dean feels a brief flash of annoyance and disappointment that Sam couldn’t just give him this, but he covers it with a smirk and a swagger. “Okay, um. Dad hasn’t been home in a few days.” Jess looks worried, glancing up at Sam, but Sam’s face takes on a familiar expression. Dean thinks of it by a few different names—the bitch face, the pissy face, the I’m-smarter-than-you face—but it’s Dean’s least favorite look on his brother. He shouldn’t have brought Dad up so fast. He showed his hand too soon, and now he’s getting this version of Sam in response.

“So he’s working overtime on a Miller Time shift. He’ll stumble back in sooner or later,” Sam says. Dean wonders what he’s told Jess about their father, what he's told Jess about Dean. Sam looks so damn smug in his tidy little apartment, pretty girlfriend tucked under his arm. So superior to the father and brother he left behind for this life. Dean ducks his head, nodding a little, fighting the urge to get angry or defensive. He and Sam have played this game so many times before, but somehow, Dean wasn’t ready for it this time. All he can do is take a little of the wind out of Sam’s sails.

“Dad’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home in a few days,” Dean says, and like that, Sam’s smug look evaporates along with his puffed-up posture. As easily as that, he’s Dean’s little brother again.

Without looking at Jess, Sam says, “Jess, excuse us.”

Dean explains as best he can as they walk down the stairwell to the car, though Sam, being Sam, fights him on it at every turn. Yeah, so Dad’s track record on communicating is spotty, and yeah, he gets that Sam wants to put this life behind him, but Sam _knows_ Dean. He knows Dean’s instincts and that his gut is rarely wrong. That he won’t trust Dean this time hurts. Dean stops at the bottom of the stairs, Sam two steps up. Dean has to crane his head to look at him, remembering Sam so small he had to do the same to look up at Dean.

“Now, you gonna come with me or not?” Dean asks, and Sam answers like Dean feared he would.

“I’m not.”

“Why not?” Dean asks, even though he knows why. He could tick off a list of reasons why. 

“I swore I was done hunting for good,” Sam says, but Sam swore a lot of things. He and Dean made each other so many promises over those last few months. Mostly Sam. Dean didn’t begrudge Sam breaking those promises, not when he left for Stanford, not when the phone calls dwindled down to nothing. It figures this would be the one promise Sam actually kept. 

“Come on,” Dean says. “It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t that bad.” _I wasn’t that bad_ , is what Dean really means. _Being with me wasn’t that bad, was it? The rest of it, but not me._

Sam’s so smart, but he’s so damn literal, so they have to rehash it: their childhood, their training, hunting, Dad. Why Sam wanted to leave, and why Dean couldn’t. Then there’s the thing they don’t rehash, the one they don’t talk about: Why Dean wanted Sam to stay, and why Sam wouldn’t.

“And that’s why you ran away?” Dean asks, looking away. _That’s why you left me_ remains unsaid.

“I was just going to college,” Sam says. “It was Dad who said if I was gonna go, I should stay gone.” He shrugs. “And that’s what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, well Dad’s in real trouble right now, if he’s not dead already. I can feel it.” Dean searches Sam’s impassive face, looking for something, anything to indicate that Sam cares, for Dean’s sake if not for Dad’s. The silence stretches between them, Sam’s eyes darting just once to Dean’s mouth, then back to his eyes. If only the look on Sam’s face were smug again, or angry, or anything other than this blank, patient look. 

Dean is the one who breaks the stalemate. He always has been. 

“I can’t do this alone,” he tells Sam.

“Yes, you can,” Sam answers, not a hint of doubt in his voice, and that’s at the heart of it, really. Sam never thought Dean needed him. He might never have thought about what Dean needed, period. That realization takes all the fight out of Dean.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to,” Dean admits. Sam’s face softens then, and he sighs, letting his head drop forward. When he lifts his head again, Dean can immediately tell something has changed.

“What was he hunting?”

Dean pulls out the paperwork and plays the voicemail for Sam, and for a few minutes, things feel like they did before Sam left. Sam’s eyes burn bright, worried about Dean hunting alone, pleased with himself for noticing the EVP on the recording, proud of Dean for cleaning up the audio. He’s back in it, suddenly, wanting to uncover the answers and solve the problem. It’s the opening Dean needed. He shuts the Impala’s trunk and leans back on it. 

“You know in almost two years I’ve never bothered you. I’ve never asked you for a thing,” Dean says, and it’s true. He did all his asking before Sam left for Stanford. 

Sam sighs, turning his head back toward the apartment building. Dean can watch him wrestling with it, so he doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t change his expression. He lets Sam come to the decision on his own.

“All right,” Sam says. “I’ll go. I’ll help you find him.” Dean starts to nod, but Sam continues, “But not until Monday.”

“What’s Monday?”

“An interview.”

“A job interview?” Dean scoffs. “Skip it.”

Sam squares his shoulders, the superior tone back in his voice. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted. “It’s a law school interview, and it’s my whole future on a plate.”

“Law school?” Dean asks, surprised by how surprised he is. 

“So we got a deal or not?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know, man. Leave Dad twisting in the wind for three more days?” Dean shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”

“If you want me to go with you, that’s what I need,” Sam says. “The interview’s at eight Monday morning, and we can be on the road by nine.”

“Okay, we got a deal,” Dean says. He slides off the trunk and claps Sam on the shoulder, turning toward the Impala’s driver’s seat.

“What are you doing?” Sam asks.

“Figured I’d find a cheap motel to crash in for the night, if something like that even exists in Palo Alto.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Sam says. “Get your stuff. You can stay on our couch.”

Dean feels his eyebrows creeping up towards his hairline. “You sure?”

“Like you said, it’s been two years. Just give me a minute to talk to Jess,” Sam says.

“Sure thing, Sammy.”

“And Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Sam.”

Dean chuckles to himself as he grabs his duffel. He makes sure the Impala is locked up tight, then leans back against her and counts down five minutes on his watch. By the time he gets back up to Sam’s apartment—through the front door this time—he finds Jess in the middle of putting sheets on the couch. She’s wearing floral-print pajama pants and a hoodie that looks like it probably belongs to Sam.

“Sam’s looking for an extra blanket,” Jess says. She tucks in the bottom of the flat sheet and stands there staring at it for a little too long. When she finally looks up at Dean, her expression is an intense scowl that seems out of place on her pretty face. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for Sam to go with you.”

“Well, Sammy’s a big boy,” Dean says. “He can make up his own mind.”

“I know, and if he wants to go with you, I’ll support him. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Sam’s probably told you a lot of shit about our dad, but he doesn’t—”

“Not because of your dad,” she interrupts. “Because of you.”

Outwardly, Dean smirks and leans against a bookshelf stuffed with fancy hardback books. Inwardly, Dean enters a panic spiral. “Oh? How’s that?”

“I don’t know exactly. I can just feel it. Something’s changed. He’s different, and I know it’s because you showed up here tonight.”

“He’s probably just worried about Dad,” Dean says, “or he’s pissed at me for dragging him into it. They didn’t exactly get along.”

Jess shakes her head. “No. I don’t think that’s it.”

“Look, Jess, I don’t know you, and you sure as shit don’t know me. I’m just here to get Sam’s help finding our dad and bringing him home. I’m not getting in the way of his interview. We’ll only be gone a couple of days and then I’m out of your hair.”

Before Jess answers, Sam comes back into the living room with a folded quilt in his arms. He kisses Jess on the cheek and she smiles at Sam without quite taking her eyes off Dean.

“It’s a little musty, but it’ll do the trick,” Sam says, shaking out the quilt, which has seashells on it in various shades of blue. Dean snatches it from Sam’s hands before he can spread it on the couch. 

“I’ll take care of that,” Dean says. “I should let you kids get back to sleep.”

“Jess, you can go to bed if you want. I’m going to stay up and talk to Dean a little, if you don’t mind,” Sam says. Jess’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes, but she lets Sam pull her into a kiss. 

“Wake me if you need anything,” Jess tells Sam. 

“I won’t keep him up too late,” Dean says, with a pasted-on grin. Jess can’t narrow her eyes at him with Sam watching, so she murmurs “goodnight” and disappears back into the bedroom. Sam turns off the overhead light and flips on a lamp, bathing the room in a warm glow. Dean lays the blanket out over the sheets on the couch and then takes a seat. “So, about that beer?” he prompts Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Unless you wanted something stronger.”

“As long as it’s not rum, Sammy. You know me and rum don’t get along.”

“It’s _Sam_ , and no, it’s not rum.” Sam walks into the little kitchen and gets a bottle down from above the stove. Dean has a clear line of sight from the couch into the kitchen. Sam gets down a familiar bottle.

“So you grew up to be a Jack man like Dad after all,” Dean says, loud enough for Sam to hear him but to hopefully not disturb Jess.

“Coke?” Sam asks politely. “Ice?”

“I’ll take it in a glass if you don’t want to pass the bottle back and forth.”

Sam snorts. “Smartass.” He grabs two glasses from a cabinet.

“Well, yeah, Sam. I’m a friggin’ genius,” Dean says.

“Ha,” Sam deadpans. He sets the glasses on the coffee table in front of Dean and pours a couple fingers of whiskey into one glass, then the other. Dean raises an eyebrow. Sam pours another couple fingers into the second glass. Dean winks as he picks up the glass.

“Two years,” Dean says, swirling the Jack in its glass before taking a swallow.

“Yeah,” Sam says. He sits down on the other end of the couch, feet of space between them that feel like miles, like months.

“So… did you miss me?” Dean asks. He tries to sound casual, but his voice hitches at the end. He couldn’t look at Sam right now if he wanted to. He might catch the couch on fire. He might burn the whole goddamn place down.

“Dean.” Sam says softly. “Listen, I—”

“Nevermind,” Dean says. “It’s okay, Sammy. Just making conversation.”

“Dean.”

“It means a lot, that’s you’re coming with me to find Dad,” Dean says into his glass. He punctuates the sentence with another swallow. “I’m sure it’ll mean a lot to him, too.”

“I’m not doing it for him,” Sam says.

“Then why?” Dean lets himself risk a glance over at Sam then. His brother is staring straight ahead, his face in profile, edged with gold from the lamp behind him. He looks like a painting Dean saw in an old church once, like an icon of a saint. 

Sam doesn’t turn towards Dean when he answers. “You know why.”

Dean exhales loudly and tosses back the rest of his Jack. He grabs the bottle and pours himself another.

“Go easy,” Sam says.

“Why?” Dean asks. “In fact…” He tops off Sam’s drink before setting the bottle back down and taking a pointed gulp of his own whiskey. Sam huffs quietly. “What? Are you getting up early tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Saturday. You got class on Saturday? Drink, Sammy.”

Sam shakes his head. “I’m good, but you do whatever you want, Dean. You always do.”

Anger flares in Dean like a match. “ _I_ do whatever I want? Since when? You’re the one who always did whatever the hell he wanted. You’re the one who, who—”

“Who _what?_ Got out?” Sam asks, voice rising. “Who got away from Dad? Who went to college? Who got to have a life outside of hunting?”

“Who _left_ ,” Dean says. “I didn’t stop you from leaving, Sam. How is that me doing what I want? How can you say that to me?”

“Nevermind,” Sam mutters, poison-bitter.

“Do you think I wanted you to leave?” Dean demands.

“I think it worked out just fine for you,” Sam says. “I think it made things easier for you, not having me there, not having to look after me, not having to get between me and Dad all the time. And I’m not the only person in this family who left someone.”

“Fuck you,” Dean says, tossing back the rest of his glass of Jack in a single swallow.

Sam’s tone changes, shifting to that old mollifying voice he used to use, the wheedling voice that helped him get his way when he was little and Dean just wanted him to be happy. “Dean. Come on, I wasn’t trying to start a fight.”

“ _Fuck you!_ ” Dean repeats. He grabs the bottle and pours more whiskey into his glass. Some sloshes over the rim and spills onto the blue shell quilt. 

“Hey, careful. Jess’s grandmother made her that quilt,” Sam says, trying to take the bottle from Dean’s hand. 

“Fuck you, Sam,” Dean says. “I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have come.”

“Why did you, Dean? Leaving without an explanation. Two years, _two years_ without a phone call and you show up in the middle of the night. Why?”

“Fuck you, Sammy. Why don’t you go to bed with your girlfriend so you can get up early and, I don’t know, go to the farmer’s market. Run a 5k. Whatever normal people do. _Safe_ people. Not people like me.”

“Dean,” Sam says. His eyes look wet. His mouth is a wound. Dean hurt him in that tirade, though he doesn't know which words dealt the blow. The whiskey slams his brain all at once, a freight train of shame and early childhood memories of his dad sobbing over an empty bottle.

“Shit,” Dean says to himself. “Shit, Sammy. I’m sorry. I’m messed up, man. That’s not on you.”

“It’s okay. I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean that, about you always doing what you want,” Sam says.

“No, I know. I didn’t mean any of that shit either.”

“When’s the last time you slept?” 

Dean shrugs. “Two, three days?”

“Here,” Sam says. He gently takes the bottle of Jack Daniels and Dean’s glass from his hands, setting them down on the coffee table. They’re both wet. They’ll leave rings, and Jess will blame Dean. She was right to mistrust him, after all. It’s a shame; he liked her, liked how she tried to protect Sam.

“I’m sorry, Sammy.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam says. “Come on. Lie down.” He takes Dean by the shoulders. His hands are so big, bigger than when he left for Stanford, but they fit the rest of his body better now, too. Sam carefully lays Dean down with his head on the pillow. He props Dean’s feet across his lap and unlaces Dean’s boots, sliding them off and setting them next to the couch. He peels off Dean’s socks, too. His hands are so warm on Dean’s feet.

“I gotta find him,” Dean whispers. A tear rolls down his cheek and soaks into the pillow. 

“We will,” Sam promises… but Sam doesn’t keep his promises. Doesn’t he realize Dean knows that?

“He’s all I got left, Sammy.”

Sam sighs, a long and drawn-out breath like a great winter wind whistling through bare trees. He tucks the shell quilt around Dean. “We’ll find him. Get some sleep, Dean. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

Dean’s too drunk-dizzy to argue. Stupid, slamming down that much Jack on an empty stomach and days without sleep. Stupid, slipping like that in front of Sam. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He’s always been the stupid one.

“Night, Dean,” Sam says, switching off the lamps. Dean hears him going back into the bedroom, hears Jessica’s soft voice talking. He wonders what she’s telling Sam, what Sam is telling her. A painful loneliness lays across Dean’s chest like a tired old hound. He shouldn’t’ve come. He shouldn’t’ve—

Sunlight slaps Dean in the face at about the same time the jackhammers start up in his head. He has no sense of the time and only a vague memory of the place, so when he lurches to his feet, he catches the sharp edge of a coffee table across both shins.

“Son of a bitch!” His stomach roils. Where’s the bathroom in this place? He’d rather not puke in the kitchen sink, though he will if he— okay, there. Tiny room on the right, door open and waiting for him. He vomits whiskey-sour bile into the pristine white toilet for a few minutes before pressing his face to the cold tile floor – equally clean, some part of him notes.

Around him, the apartment—Sam’s apartment—is silent. Sam was always an early riser, and Jess didn’t strike him as the sleep-till-noon type, so the quiet means they’re gone. They’re probably doing brunch with their Oprah book club. 

Dean rinses his mouth with the Listerine he finds in the medicine cabinet over the sink, then swallows a few Tylenol from the same cabinet. The ceramic toothbrush holder has a new, still-wrapped red toothbrush in it. Dean’s better angels acknowledge it’s actually pretty thoughtful of Jess or Sam to make sure he had what he needed; Dean’s rowdier demons are a little butthurt that Jess or Sam thinks he doesn’t own a toothbrush. Dean’s practical need to not punch a gift horse in the mouth motivates him to actually use the toothbrush. 

Dean isn’t sure what to do with himself in Sam’s empty apartment. He’s too hungover to snoop, too awake to sleep any longer. He wanders into the kitchen and helps himself to a glass of water. It tastes unpleasant and faintly metallic, like the aftertaste of blood. A cursory glance in the fridge scores him an orange Gatorade, which is practically like finding the holy grail when he’s hungover. He retreats to the couch to drink it and wait.

Eventually, he hears footsteps in the hallway, along with talking and laughter. The front door opens and in come Sam and Jess, dressed in workout clothes, holding coffee and two white paper bags in their hands. Sam and Jess must’ve had a good talk about him, because her scowl doesn’t reappear. The smile she gives him, along with a polite “good morning,” is sincere and sympathetic.

“Hey,” Sam says. “We didn’t wake you, did we?” 

Dean lifts the mostly-empty Gatorade bottle and jiggles it. “Nah, I’ve been up for a while. Thanks for the toothbrush.” Sam’s brow furrows in confusion. Jess, then. Dean offers her a weary, wary smile. “Red’s my color.”

He actually gets a laugh out of Jess, who hands him one of the coffees. “Sam says you drink it black?”

“You’re an angel,” Dean says, gladly accepting the cup. The aroma coming through the little hole in the plastic lid promises high-end coffee, not shitty, stale gas station stuff. The first sip proves his guess right. “That is some damn fine coffee.”

“It’s from a place just up the street. They roast their own beans,” Sam says.

“Sure. Of course they do. It’s California,” Dean says.

“We brought you back a muffin, too,” Jess says. She elbows Sam, who holds one of the white bags in Dean’s direction. Inside, Dean finds a muffin that looks like it’s half the size of his head. The muffin smells like lemons and is covered in streusel topping.

“Why do I feel like you’re about to tell me I’ve got cancer?” Dean asks. Sam rolls his eyes. 

“We always stop by Back to the Grind after our run,” Sam says. “Seemed rude not to bring you something back.” He sits down next to Dean, close enough for Dean to smell his sweat, familiar from years of wrestling, sparring, and fighting together. Familiar from weeks of stolen touches. A bead of it rolls down Sam’s neck from his hairline and into his collar. Dean tracks its path. He can almost taste it.

Jess grabs a pastry out of the second white bag and takes a small bite as she moves through the room. “Okay, so I’m going to take a shower. Sam, make sure he knows about later today, alright?”

Jess enters the bedroom and closes the door behind her. Dean takes a tentative bite of his muffin while he looks expectantly at Sam. The muffin is the perfect balance of sour and sweet for Dean’s hangover.

“It’s good,” Dean says.

“Yeah. You always liked sour stuff when you were hungover, so I figured…” Sam shrugs.

“It’s great,” Dean says. He takes another bite of the muffin, bigger this time, and almost chokes as he starts to laugh. Through a mouthful of crumbs, he says, “Remember the Sour Patch Kids?”

Sam’s face immediately splits into a wide, dimpley grin. “You and that girl, the red-haired one, what was her name?”

“Maxine,” Dean says wistfully. 

“Yeah. You and Maxine split that bottle of vodka. You were _so_ hungover the next day.”

“We were celebrating… something. I think. Maybe just Dad being gone.”

“But then he showed up at like five in the morning,” Sam says. “He would have kicked your ass if he’d known you were out getting shitfaced and lea—”

“Leaving little Sammy home alone, yeah,” Dean said. “You were thirteen?”

“Twelve, I think,” Sam says. “You woke up and you were so sick.”

“But you had that big bag of Sour Patch Kids. You’d saved up for it. It was like a two pound bag or something, wasn’t it? When you bought ’em, you told me to keep my hands off, they were all yours.”

Sam beams, nodding. “But sweet and sour stuff always helped when you felt sick. You were curled up on the bed. It was the house in Hiawassee. We were sharing a bedroom.”

“And you fed me Sour Patch Kids one at a time for about an hour,” Dean says. He shakes his head at the memory. “Then you kept slipping me a couple at a time for the rest of the day. Dad never found out.”

“I was so pissed,” Sam says.

“Well, yeah, you didn’t wanna share your candy,” Dean says.

“No,” Sam says. His hair falls over his forehead as he shakes his head vigorously. “Not at you. At Dad. You were scared of what he was going to do if he found out. I hated that.”

“Woulda kicked my ass probably,” Dean says. “And I probably deserved it.”

“You were sixteen, Dean. You made a mistake.”

“No room for mistakes in our line of work, Sammy.”

“Sam. And that’s bullshit,” Sam says. “Being sick would have been punishment enough for most parents. You didn’t deserve to get hit on top of it.”

Dean takes a long sip of his coffee to circumvent his knee-jerk reaction that he _did_ probably deserve to get hit on top of it for being so irresponsible. “He didn’t really hit me that much.”

“Once would’ve been too often,” Sam says. Something in Sam’s tone keeps Dean from looking over at him. Sam’s body is a taut line beside him. Whatever expression he has on his face, Dean probably couldn’t stand it. so Dean does what he does best and changes the subject.

“So what’s going on later today that you’re supposed to tell me about?” Dean asks. 

“Oh,” Sam says. He seems to suddenly remember he has a coffee and food of his own. He fishes a giant blueberry muffin out of the bag that held Jess’s pastry. “We want to give you a tour of Palo Alto, maybe show you around the campus, and then we’re going to dinner.”

“Campus tour, huh?” Dean raises his eyebrows. “Sounds fun.”

“This is my life, Dean. I just want you to know what it’s like.”

“So what’s for dinner?”

“There’s a taco place we like to go to sometimes,” Sam says. “Part of the kitchen is open to the rest of the restaurant. You can watch them make the tortillas right there.”

“Maybe that’s what I’ll do when I retire,” Dean says. “Make tortillas.”

“Do you think you ever will? Retire, I mean,” Sam asks.

Dean shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably not. You know how this job usually ends.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“Doesn’t it?”

Sam doesn’t have a response ready for that, so they sit in awkward silence, eating their muffins and finishing their coffee. Dean’s head throbs, so he closes his eyes and takes a few slow breaths, smelling coffee, lemons, and Sam. He would bottle that smell if he could. He’d take it with him on the road and pull it out every night to lull himself to sleep and every morning to bring him back to life. 

Jess emerges from the bedroom, dressed in jeans and a pale yellow sweater that hangs off one shoulder. The towel wrapped around her hair leaves the curve of her long neck exposed, a line of skin from neck to shoulder only broken by a lacy camisole strap. Sam had always gone for the quiet, nerdy girls in high school. Dean hadn’t expected someone like Jess, as beautiful as Sam and just as opinionated. 

“I’m going to put on some more coffee,” Jess says. “One cup is _not_ doing it for me this morning.”

“Sorry about that,” Dean says sheepishly. Jess shrugs and gives him a wry smile.

“Baby, did you tell him the plan?” Jess asks over shoulder as she walks into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “He thinks it’s a great idea.”

“Liar,” Dean mutters under his breath.

“He’s really looking forward to the tortillas,” Sam adds.

“That part’s true, anyway,” Dean says.

“We could take him out to Half Moon Bay if he wants,” Jess says. 

“Little cold for the beach,” Dean says, still in an undertone. 

Sam laughs. “It’s the Pacific Ocean, Dean. It’s always cold. It’s pretty, though. I think you’d like it out there.”

“Why not?” Dean says, loud enough for Jess to hear. 

“We’ll even let you drive. I have _got_ to get in that car I’ve heard so much about,” Jess says. 

“Okay,” Dean says to Sam, lowering his voice again. “Why’s she being so nice?”

“Jess is always nice.”

“Jess would’ve thrown me out on my ass last night.”

“We talked. It’s not a problem,” Sam says. 

“Talked about _what_?” Dean asks. 

“I hadn’t really filled in a lot of details about what it was like, growing up on the road,” Sam says. “Hunting aside, it was still… hard.” 

“And so we’re all friends now?”

“She knows you always looked out for me. She knows I probably wouldn’t be here without you. That means a lot to her.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Dean protests.

“It was like that,” Sam says, and the look on his face, the way he holds his body, says that’s the end of that line of conversation.

Jess comes back from the kitchen with two mugs of coffee, which she places down in front of Dean and Sam. Dean’s is black, Sam’s is light. Some things never change. Jess drops a kiss on top of Sam’s head and wrinkles her nose.

“Time for a shower,” she says. 

“But you just brought me coffee,” Sam protests. 

“That was before I smelled you. Now I brought _me_ coffee. Go get cleaned up so your brother can have a turn.” 

Sam rolls his eyes, but he stands up. “All right. Hint taken.”

“Oh, it wasn’t a hint, baby,” Jess says, waving her hand in front of her nose. She takes Sam’s seat, curling up against the arm of the couch with her legs tucked under her and taking Sam’s abandoned mug in her hands. She sits silently until the water starts running, then gives Dean an appraising look. “Is Sam going to get hurt?”

Dean starts to shake his head, then stops himself. “Honestly? I don’t know. I’m not sure what Dad’s gotten himself into.”

“Again, it’s not about your father,” Jess says.

“Am I gonna hurt him?” Dean asks. Jess nods. “I wouldn’t.”

“You have. You did, when you didn’t call him for years.”

“I thought I was helping him,” Dean says. “I thought it was what he wanted. Me out of his life. Being able to forget about how we grew up.”

Jess exhales slowly. She shifts closer to Dean and balances the mug on one of her knees. “Has Sam ever forgotten anything? In the history of _ever_?”

“Thought he’d be happier without it in his face, at least,” Dean says.

“I don’t know all the details about how you grew up.”

“Lady, you don’t know a fraction of the details.”

“And I accept that Sam isn’t ready to share all of that,” Jess says calmly, as though Dean hasn’t spoken at all. “Whatever it was, I know it wasn’t good for him, and I don’t think it was good for you, either.”

“I’m not ashamed of where I come from,” Dean says, tensing his jaw and lifting his chin. He’s not going to be talked down to by some college girl whose only knowledge about him comes from playing house with Sam. 

“No. I can see that,” Jess says. “I don’t think you should be, by the way. From what Sam has told me, I think you should be proud.”

“It’s not about pride.”

“Isn’t it?” Jess asks. “You’re proud of Sam, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but that’s different. He’s Sam. He pisses me off sometimes, but he’s done good for himself,” Dean says. “I’m not proud of myself or ashamed of myself. I don’t look at it like that. I live like I was raised. He doesn’t. That’s all there is to it.”

“That’s all there is to it?” Jess arches one eyebrow. 

“Look, let’s drop it. Don’t make it more complicated than it is.”

“Okay. I won’t,” Jess says. “So, have you ever seen the Pacific Ocean before?”

“I’ve been to both coasts and the Gulf. We weren’t exactly there for a beach day, though,” Dean says. 

“Well, I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s great.”

Jess makes a noise of frustration. “The sarcasm? Not your best trait.”

“Nope. That’d be my strong jawline,” Dean says.

“Hmm.” Jess drinks her coffee and watches Dean in a way that makes him feel like he’s been stuck on one of those little glass slides from science class and slid under a microscope. He has a weird suspicion she can see right through to his bones. 

“You know they make cell phones with cameras now,” Dean says.

“Charming,” Jess says. “So, tell me something about yourself.”

“Sam’s already told you stuff about me.”

“He’s told me some stuff, but that’s just his perception of you, what he was there for. You tell me something that’s just about you.”

Dean’s hard pressed to think of a story that doesn’t involve hunting, Sam, or both. Most of his hobbies involve making or cleaning weapons or other hunting equipment. He spends most of his time driving, fighting, drinking, or fucking. “I, uh, like to read, I guess.”

“What kind of books?”

“All kinds. I like science fiction, like Azimov. Vonnegut. No horror. I’ll read a western if there’s one lying around,” Dean says. “I read most of the stuff Sam got assigned for school so I could help him with his book reports, until he got to high school and didn’t need my help anymore.” He runs a hand over the back of his head, scratching his short hair. “Guess he never really needed my help, but he didn’t tell me to get lost until tenth grade or so, so nothing from school after that.”

“So you read the books Sam was assigned, but not the books you were assigned?” Jess asks. 

“I, uh. I dunno what Sam told you, but I didn’t graduate high school. We traveled around so much, I had to, uh, work a lot of the time, and it made more sense to drop out, get my GED,” Dean says. Usually, he doesn’t feel ashamed of not finishing high school. It’s just part of being in the life. Telling Jess about it makes his face feel warm, though. She’s used to Sam, genius Sam Winchester with his full ride to Stanford, and here Dean is, telling her about being a high school drop out. 

“That must have been hard,” Jess says. She’s still studying him, her eyes moving over his face as he talks. 

“I made sure that didn’t happen to Sam, though,” Dean says. That much, he _is_ proud of. “He graduated a little late, which pissed him off, but that was from early on. He missed enough of one school year, they made him repeat it.” Jess frowns, so he quickly adds, “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t smart! They just didn’t realize how smart he was. They thought nobody was teaching him things while we were moving around. He didn’t talk much when he was little, didn’t like them asking him questions, which I guess was a good thing. Kept us out of trouble.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jess says.

“Well, don’t tell him I told you,” Dean says. “He might still be sore about it. No telling with him.”

“Okay, I won’t,” Jess says. “You didn’t have someone to make sure you graduated?” She pitches her voice like it’s a question, but they both know it’s not. 

“Nah. Dad had other stuff going on.”

“But not you.”

“I had other stuff, too, but looking after Sammy was my number one job.” Dean smiles—a real one, not a smirk—to himself. “I think he turned out okay.”

“I think so, too,” Jess says. “I think he turned out great. I guess that means I should thank you.” 

Dean scoffs. “You can thank me with another cup of coffee, if you want.”

Jess smiles, showing her even white teeth. “Sure, I can do that.”

“I knew I liked you,” Dean calls after her as she takes his mug into the kitchen to pour more coffee for him.

“Oh, did you?” Jess calls back.

“I mean, for starters, we’re both fans of the Smurfs,” Dean says. Jess laughs, walking back in with the coffee. She hands Dean’s mug to him.

“And fans of Sam,” Jess says. 

“Well, yeah, that goes without saying.”

Jess settles herself on the couch again. “Sorry I was kind of a bitch last night.”

“Dude, I broke into your house in the middle of the night and tried to kidnap your boyfriend,” Dean says. “I’d be kind of a bitch, too. I should’ve taken the less shitty route.”

“What’s the less shitty route?”

“Actually, like, knocking on the door at a decent hour.”

“Oh, so you do have a basic understanding of manners,” Jess says, which makes Dean laugh. “So why didn’t you?” Dean shakes his head. “No, really. I’m serious. Why not just knock on the door?”

“I guess…” Dean pauses until Jess nods at him in encouragement. “I guess I was worried he was gonna slam it in my face.” Jess winces. “Yeah, so. Sorry about that.”

“You really thought he’d do that?” she asks.

“I bailed on him for two years, and before that, well.” Dean takes a long, deep breath and exhales slowly. “Shit’s never not been complicated.”

“Sounds like there’s a lot of baggage there,” Jess says.

“Good thing I’ve got a big trunk, huh?” 

“Anyway, I think he’s really glad you’re here, even if it’s because your dad’s missing.”

“I hope so. I miss the kid, but I didn’t show up to wreck his whole life,” Dean says. “I hope he gets that. Of course, I wish he hadn’t—” He breaks off and shakes his head. They’re treading on dangerous ground here, and he doesn’t know her well enough for this. He doesn’t know anyone well enough for this.

“You didn’t want him to go to college?” Jess asks.

“I did and I didn’t. College wasn’t the problem. I was real proud of him for getting in, for the scholarship. Dad, though.” Dean whistles. “It didn’t go over great with him, and I think Sammy thought maybe I agreed with Dad, at least a little bit.”

“Did you?” 

“I never would have told Sam that if he left, he shouldn’t come back. Never.”

“I believe you,” Jess says. “Does Sam know that?”

“Of course he does,” Dean says. “He has to.”

“Are you sure?”

“I told him! I mean, he knows I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted him to be able to go to college, to have all that normal kid crap, you know? I didn’t get it. I still don’t, I guess. I don’t know why he wanted to leave m— _us_ , but I wasn’t pissed at him about it. Not really. I didn’t want him to _stay_ gone.”

“Just… maybe make sure you tell him that?” Jess says. “This weekend or Monday or sometime, okay?”

“We don’t talk about that kind of shit. It’s not our, you know.” Dean waves his hand around.

“Dynamic?” Jess suggests.

“Yeah, sure. We don’t do the feelings thing.”

“You’re doing the ‘feelings thing’ with me right now,” Jess points out.

“That’s different. You’re a chick,” Dean says. “You can heart-to-heart with a woman without it coming across… well.” 

“Hmm.” 

“What do you mean, ‘hmm’?” Dean asks.

“I think you should consider it, is all,” Jess says.

“Consider what?” Sam asks, coming back into the living room. Unlike Jess, his too-long hair isn’t wrapped in a towel, and it drips onto the shoulders of his shirt.

“You need a haircut, Sasquatch,” Dean says.

“Sure I do,” Sam says. “Consider what?”

“You’re a dog with a bone, you know that?” Dean says.

“Consider sticking around a few days,” Jess says. “After you two find your dad, I mean.”

Sam’s face brightens. “Yeah? You think you’d maybe want to do that?”

Jess turns to look at Dean and gives him such a stern look that he finds himself saying, “I mean, sure. Maybe, yeah. Long as Jess doesn’t mind me sticking around here and monopolizing her couch.”

“I bought that couch,” Sam says.

“Okay, good, ’cause I was gonna say, that thing is ugly as fu—” Jess swats Dean on the arm. “Ow!”

Sam bursts out laughing. “Good to see you two are getting along,” he says. “Dean, did you want the shower?”

“Nah, I’m fine,” Dean says, while simultaneously, Jess says, “Oh yes, he wants it.”

“Hey,” Dean protests.

“You smell like a distillery,” Jess says. “I am not riding around in a car with you.”

“There’s clean towels under the sink,” Sam says.

“All right, all right, I’m going,” Dean says. This is his first trip into the bedroom. It’s a nice room, big bed, real wooden nightstands that aren’t actually plastic crates on their side, and a dresser that matches the rest of the furniture. Books in a stack on a desk stuck in the corner, framed photographs on the walls. It smells like Sam’s rooms used to, but with an added layer of floral and fruit on top of is. Jess’s lotions and perfumes and stuff, probably. He’s bone-tired, suddenly, and wants to fall into that Sam-smelling bed like it’s three years ago. 

“Shit,” Dean murmurs to himself, because this isn’t the way it’s supposed to go. He likes Jess. He likes Jess for Sam. He wants Sam to come with him. He wants Sam to _stay_ with him, but if he has to let him go again, leaving him in Jess’s hands isn’t as bad as sending him off alone. Dean wants a lot of things he hasn’t let himself think about for a long time now. Sam’s smell. Sam’s skin. Shit. He’d better get his head on straight. 

The bathroom isn’t much to write home about, and the water pressure isn’t much better than what they get at motels, but it’s clean. The water gets nice and hot as he holds his hand under the spray. No three-in-one hair and body products on the hanging rack, either, or cracked bars of rock-solid soap. Instead, there’s coordinating shampoo, conditioner, and bodywash, and two scrubby-puff things dangling from hooks. With a shrug, Dean undresses and then steps into the water. As the hot water runs over his head, he closes his eyes and tries to let his mind go blank. 

Two people have already showered, though, and the hot water can’t be unlimited, so Dean only gives himself a minute or two of unproductive time. Once his head feels a little less fogged, he picks up the shampoo and squints at the label in confusion.

“What the hell is a tonka bean?” he asks the bottle of shampoo. Popping the lid to smell it doesn’t answer any questions; the shampoo has a mild herbal and vanilla scent. “Hmm. Okay, not too girly.” 

Dean shampoos his hair, uses a squirt of the body wash in his hands to give himself a cursory wash—he draws the line at using somebody else’s scrubby-puff things—and then makes the mistake of thinking of Sam and Jess together in this shower. How they’d fit into the space, and how they’d fit together. The mental picture is pretty fucking hot, and Dean’s dick suggests he could spend a few extra minutes in the shower deeply considering that mental picture.

“You’re a menace,” Dean tells his dick, then proceeds to start jerking off as quickly as he can. He has places he can’t let his mind go right now, but he’s here in Sam’s apartment, so _not_ going there is its own kind of challenge. Jess. He can think about Jess. She’s hot, like really hot, and that’s a pretty safe image right there as long as Sam never finds out. 

Pressing Jess up against the wall of the shower. Yeah, that’s good. That’ll work. He closes his eyes tighter. Sees himself running his hands over her wet, bare skin, only as Dean gets closer to coming, it’s not his hands he’s picturing on Jess anymore. He can see Sam’s broad, tan hands sliding down her body, cupping her ass and pressing himself against it. Dean comes approximately thirty seconds after that, hard enough that he has to brace his other hand against the wall to ride it out. 

Okay, so he went there. That’s fine. He’ll survive it. All he has to do is rinse off, get out of the shower, put on his clothes, and then spend the next two days pretending to be a normal, non-fucked-up person. Sure. He can do that. Two more days, and he and Sam are on the road. Two more days, and—

A loud knock derails Dean’s train of thought, and he quickly shuts off the water. “Yeah?”

“You left your duffel out here,” Sam yells through the door. “Figured you’d want something clean to put on.”

“Thanks, yeah.”

“It’s right outside the door.”

“Thanks, Sammy.”

“It’s _Sam_.” 

“Sorry. Meant to say thanks, bitch.”

Dean can hear Sam laughing through the door. “You’re welcome, jerk.”

After quickly toweling himself off, Dean ties the towel around his waist and opens the bathroom door to grab his duffel. Swipe of deodorant under each arm. His jeans from the previous night aren’t walking around on their own yet, so he tugs those on over a pair of clean boxers. Black tee, flannel button up, socks: check, check, and check. He shoves his dirty clothes back into the duffel. 

Sam and Jess look about ready to go when Dean gets out of the bathroom, the sheets and blanket from the couch folded up neatly on the end table. Sam has on a beaten-up pair of sneakers, while Jess is wearing shoes that look more comfortable than fashionable. Again, he’s pleasantly surprised by her. Dean sits down and pulls on his boots. He doesn’t remember taking them off last night, but he woke up barefoot, so he must’ve done it at some point. 

“Where are we heading first?” Dean asks. 

“I thought we could drive through town a little and then head to the beach,” Sam said. “We can walk through campus after dinner, if you want.”

“You’re the tour guide,” Dean says. 

“Make sure you’ve got a jacket. It’ll be chilly on the beach,” Jess says. 

“Yes, ma’am.” Dean tosses off a salute at Jess, who rolls her eyes at him with the hint of a smile. 

They head down the stairs to the back of the building where Dean parked last night. Jess is suitably appreciative of the Impala, which raises her even higher in Dean’s esteem. Her eyebrows rise and she whistles. 

“Whoa! I only got a little peek this morning,” she says. “This is a gorgeous car, Dean.”

“Thanks,” he says, grinning at how excited she looks. 

“You really grew up in this car?” Jess asks Sam, who does seem to be regarding the Impala fondly. It gives Dean a warm feeling in his chest. Last night had been all business, and had left Dean wondering how Sam would react to the car in daylight.

“No place like home,” Sam says. While Jess slowly circles the Impala making appreciative noises, Sam and Dean’s eyes meet over the roof. Sam’s eyes are smoldering embers that make Dean’s breath catch. He knows his own face is giving everything away. He’d never been able to hide anything from Sam, and in the light of day, with the Impala between them, Dean suspects his face is all too easy to read. What he doesn’t know is if what he sees in Sam’s eyes really belongs to Sam or if it’s just Dean’s own bottomless want reflected back at him. 

“Shotgun!” Jess exclaims. Dean likes her, a lot, both for Sam and for herself. He’d gotten off thinking about her—and Sam, Sammy, don’t forget Sam—about ten minutes ago. But like hell he’s having anybody but his brother riding shotgun today.

“Sorry, Jess,” Dean says, not breaking eye contact between himself and Sam. “Position of shotgun’s already officially taken.”

If Jess notices them, Dean doesn’t know. He hears her disappointed “aw” and the sound of the rear passenger door opening and closing, but it’s on the very edge of his awareness. Right now, he has tunnel vision, and the only light at the end of that tunnel is Sam’s eyes, his dimples, his golden skin.

“Hey!” Jess calls from the back seat. She must’ve rolled the window down. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

Sam blinks, and with that blink, the intensity recedes and all that’s left is Dean’s little brother. He tosses Dean an easy grin before opening the passenger door and sliding smoothly into the Impala. Dean gives himself a beat, a breath, and then he’s throwing himself into the front seat with a wicked smile made of white teeth and dirty promises. He cranks the engine. The Impala roars to life.

“All right, kids,” he says. “Where to?”

Dean has driven through empty desert landscapes and endless wooded National Parks. He’s driven up and down both coasts, up into Canada and down into Mexico at least once each, and across the middle of the US on highways old and new. He’s passed through or intentionally skirted every major city in the country. He’s seen hokey roadside attractions and primitive tent revivals. He’s witnessed nightmares and miracles. He knows the Interstate system and nearly every state route like the lines of his own palms.

Palo Alto, as it turns out, is boring as _shit_ to drive in.

Jess and Sam are what make the tour bearable. Dean doesn’t give a shit about landmarks or redwoods, but he could lose a full day listening to Sam and Jess talking over each other in an attempt to give Dean the _most accurate_ information possible. He quietly commits the streets to his mental atlas while Sam insists this place has the best burgers, but Jess swears it’s another place with dollar draft beers on Wednesday nights. If Dean had ever imagined the college experience to be like this, he might have stuck high school out and given college a whirl.

Soon, Jess directs Dean out of town and towards the Pacific. Half Moon Bay is only a twenty minute drive, and only that long due to traffic lights. The day is brisk for California, so parking at the bay isn’t an issue. The Pacific looms vast and grey beyond a flat stretch of beach.

“Hope you brought your bikini, princess,” Dean says.

“Dean!” Sam protests.

“What? I was talking to _you_.”

In the back seat, Jess cackles. 

The wind coming off the water stings, but the three of them walk down the beach anyway. They pick a spot far enough from the water to avoid the spray, but close enough for Dean to feel the ocean’s roar in his bones. The water is choppy today, the waterline edged in seafoam and dotted with driftwood. 

Jess finds a dry place to sit, kicking off her shoes and burying her feet in the sand. Sam and then Dean follow suit. The sky is clear and bleached blue above them. A few seagulls wheel overhead. The sand is cold around Dean’s bare feet. He feels the ocean pulling at him, a magnet he can barely resist.

“You ever feel like you might just walk right into it and let it carry you away?” Dean hears himself asking without any real conscious decision to do so.

“ _L’appel du vide,_ ” Sam says.

“Gesundheit,” Dean says. 

Sam fake-laughs, _ha ha_. “It means ‘the call of the void’. Like that feeling when you’re on the edge of something really high up. It’s not that you want to jump, but you’re afraid you might.”

“Huh,” Dean says. “Say it again?”

“ _L’appel du vide._ ”

Dean repeats it, committing it to memory. “So I don’t really want to wade into the ocean?”

Jess laughs, a real one. “I hope not. We’d have to fish you out. That water is freezing!”

“Guess I’ll ignore the call, then,” Dean says. He wiggles his toes in the sand, enjoying the coolness and grittiness, even if putting his boots back on will be a bitch. The sun shining down on them is warm enough to balance out the brisk, cool wind off the bay. A small sailboat with a red and white sail passes across the horizon. From the right side of the beach, a small child comes sprinting over the sand, followed closely by a young couple. All three are laughing. 

Dean looks at Sam, watching him watch the family. Sam never had that, a mother and a father to chase him down the beach on a fall day. Dean barely remembers having two parents, but Sam has no memories at all. His eyes track the child as her father catches her and swings her around. She squeals with laughter. The mother smiles and says something to the father that gets swept away in the wind. Dean sees Sam take Jess’s hand in his and squeeze it. She looks up at Sam, smiling, then tips her head down to make eye contact with Dean. Her sad eyes don’t match her smile. 

The sun moves across the sky. Dean keeps waiting for one of them to say it’s time to pack it in, but nobody does. With the exception of a few words here or there, they don’t even really talk. Dean’s heart feels heavy, but not in a bad way. He hasn’t felt contentment often enough in his life to know if that’s what this is, but it might be. It’s wrapped in a bittersweet happiness that he gets to have this for a few hours, but that he doesn’t know when or if he’ll have it again. 

Sam pulls out his phone and takes a few pictures of Jess, who mugs for the camera and blows kissy faces at him, making Dean laugh. Suddenly, Sam turns the phone camera on Dean, snapping a few quick photos before Dean can get his hand up to grab for the phone in protest. Sam blocks Dean with one arm and scrolls through the pictures with the other hand, nodding and looking pleased. As he closes the photo album, he must catch sight of the time, because he swears under his breath.

“Didn’t mean for us to be out here so long,” Sam says. “We’re not going to have enough time to hit campus before dinner.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it. This is nice,” Dean says.

“We can walk across campus after we eat to burn off some of the tacos,” Jess says. 

“I wanted Dean to get a chance to actually see it,” Sam says. 

“I’ve got excellent night vision,” Dean says. 

“Besides, Dean said he might stay another few days with us after you two find your dad,” Jess says. She looks at Dean and raises her eyebrows. “Right?”

“What the lady said,” Dean agrees. 

“We should probably drive back soon, though. Taqueria del Sol gets pretty packed on Saturdays,” Jess says. She doesn’t stand up yet, but instead gives the beach a long, sweeping glance that ends on Dean and Sam. “Sam, give me your phone.” Sam hands his phone to Jess, who promptly opens points the camera at Sam and Dean 

“Aw, hey, no,” Dean says.

“Smile!” Jess says sweetly. She takes a few pictures of Dean and Sam together before closing the phone and handing it back to Sam.

“Friggin’ paparazzi,” Dean grumbles. “Can’t go anywhere!”

“Oh, boo hoo, you’re soooo pretty,” Jess says. 

“It’s my gift and my curse, okay?” Dean says. Reluctantly, he starts brushing the sand off his feet so he can get his boots back on. He’ll still probably have to knock his boots out once they get back to the apartment to get rid of the excess sand.

Everyone is more sedate when they get back in the Impala. Dean decides to blame it on hunger and the pink tinge of autumn sunburn on their cheeks – well, his and Jess’s, anyway. Sam always tans and never burns, the lucky son of a bitch. He quietly guides Dean back into town and to the taqueria. 

As Jess warned, the place looks packed and the small lot is full. They have to park several blocks away and walk. Sam and Jess hold hands while Dean follows a couple steps behind. At the first crosswalk, Sam turns around and says, “Having trouble keeping up?”

“I’ll show you trouble,” Dean says, grabbing Sam in a headlock in the middle of the crosswalk. Sam laughs and tries to twist out of it while Jess declares, “Oh my God, you two. Are you twelve?”

“Sammy’s twelve,” Dean says, scrubbing his knuckles against Sam’s shaggy head.

“You’re twelve!” Sam counters brilliantly.

“If I’m twelve, you’re eight,” Dean says. Sam manages to free him from the headlock and twist Dean’s left arm behind his back. “Ow, you bastard.”

“Say uncle,” Sam says, steering deep up over the curb and back onto the sidewalk. Jess throws her arms up into the air and starts walking away. “Jess. Jess, come back.”

“Nice going, Sam. You ran off your own girlfriend,” Dean says.

“You started it!” Sam says.

“Jess! C’mon Jess, don’t leave him just because he’s twelve. Nobody’s gonna judge you. He’s tall for his age!” Dean calls after Jess. She turns around and flips them off with both hands while walking backwards, grinning. “Uh oh, Sam. The little woman’s getting feisty.”

“Jerk,” Sam says, giving Dean a good-natured shove before releasing his arm. He jogs to catch up with Jess, then grabs her and throws her across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. She squeals with laughter and kicks her feet. 

“Sam! Put me down!” She doesn’t sound particularly serious, kicking aside. 

Sam tucks his arm more snugly under Jess’s knees to minimize the kicking. “Sorry. Can’t do that.”

“Sam Winchester, I will hide your notes!”

“Well, that seems uncalled for,” Sam says, “but it’s a risk I’ll just have to take.”

“You two are making a scene,” Dean notes.

“I hate you both!” Jess says, still laughing. She goes limp, which isn’t a bad tactic when being carried against your will – or “against your will” in this case, heavy on the air quotes. 

After a few more yards, Sam puts Jess back onto her feet. She goes to punch him in the arm, but he catches her fist and brings it up to his mouth to kiss it. Both Jess and Dean roll their eyes. Jess lets Sam put an arm around her anyway.

The taqueria, when they get there, looks crowded, but they still have bar seating available. Since the bar apparently has the best view of the tortilla making, they’re fine with it. Dean drinks tequila and watches the tortillas come out of the little machine, piping hot. He was kidding when he said he could make tortillas when he retired—the odds of him living to old age are far worse than those of him dying young and bloody—but the process is soothing to watch. The taqueria smells like warm flour and beer. Dean watches tortilla after tortilla roll out of the machine. 

“Dean,” Sam says. His tone suggests it wasn’t the first time he said it. “Hey. You all right?”

“I think I’ve got tortilla hypnosis,” Dean admits. 

“I was just asking if you wanted to get some fresh guacamole.”

Dean nods absently. “Sure. Whatever’s good.”

“You sure you’re okay?” Sam asks.

“What? A man can’t contemplate the beauty of a universe where they make tacos right in front of you?” Dean says. Sam kind of half-smiles, the _sure, we’ll pretend it’s all fine_ expression that is a Winchester’s birthright. Jess says something to Sam, which mercifully diverts his attention away from Dean. Sometimes just being around the kid is like facing down the Eye of Sauron: he can see into Dean’s soul, and also, he’s really tall.

Jess leans across Sam to ask, “Anything you won’t eat.”

“Raw fish and Rocky Mountain oysters,” Dean says with an insincere grin. 

“I thought we could each get a different kind and share,” she explains. “They come in orders of three.”

“Well, listen to that,” Dean says, letting his grin slide into the lane of lascivious. “Must be fate.”

Between then, Sam snorts. “Like fate doesn’t have anything better to do than worry about your dining habits.”

“You don’t know. Maybe I’m important. I could be the Frodo of this story,” Dean protests.

“The Frodo. Sure.”

“Hey, and that would make you my Samwise, Sammy.”

The little puff of air Sam lets out when he laughs blows his too-long bangs off his forehead. For a moment, the broad planes of his face revealed, he looks older than twenty-two. As much as Dean thinks Sam needs a haircut, he has to fight hard not to brush the curls back into place.

“You doubt me now, but who’s to say we’re not destined for something?” Dean asks.

“I just want to be destined for law school,” Sam says. “I don’t want an epic quest or a hero’s journey.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Jess says. They all clink their shots of tequila together, drink, then then place the shot glasses back down for the bartender to refill. 

An hour later, Dean is stuffed to the gills with the second best tacos he’s ever eaten, hands down. The winner still goes to a tiny place just this side of the Mexican border in South Texas. The owner, a woman so old she had reached the point of looking ageless, thanked Dean in food for saving her grandson from a black cadejo that had followed him to Texas from Guatemala. Those tacos had been seasoned with adrenaline and cold beer and pride. These were a pretty close second, nonetheless.

As Jess peers at the bill, she shakes her head. “Oh, we drank a lot of tequila. We have to drive.” She looks at Dean and squints in a way he imagines is meant to be menacing, but mostly looks cute. “Are you drunk? Can you drive?”

“I only had like three shots of tequila and my weight in tacos,” Dean says. “I’m fine.”

“Sam could administer a sobriety test,” Jess suggests.

“Sure,” Sam says. “Hey Dean. You drunk?”

“Nope.”

“He passed,” Sam informs Jess. 

Dean ends up putting the meal on Hector Aframian’s card. He’s being foolish, wasting it on overpriced tacos and tequila, but Sam’s scholarship surely doesn’t cover off-campus food and expecting Jess to foot the bill would feel shitty. Besides, he can show Sam he’s taking care of himself just fine without Sam mother-henning him about the budget and moralizing over scammed credit cards. 

“Where to now?” Dean asks as they exit the restaurant. Now that it’s past sundown, the air has an actual chill to it that makes Dean glad for his jacket. The walk to the car seems a little farther, but that might be due to drunk-Jess and her snail-paced drunk-walking.

“We can park on the edge of campus and walk across it, at least,” Sam says. 

“It’s so pretty,” drunk-Jess says.

“Sure,” Dean says. Jess beams at him, and he decides he’d do an awful lot to see that smile again. The more time he spends with her, the more he likes her, and not just as an extension of or safety net for Sam. She’s hot and funny, and more importantly, she doesn’t seem to tolerate or dole out much bullshit. Sam may have found the literal perfect woman, and Dean can’t even feel bitter or resentful about Sam succeeding in yet one more area where Dean has failed. He’s too fucking happy to meet someone who loves Sam as much as he does, and in so many of the same ways. 

Back at the car, Sam checks Jess’s lap belt before getting into the front passenger. “These old belts are a pain in the ass,” Sam explains to her. She wrinkles up her nose and giggles. A happy drunk. Go figure. Sam’s a happy drunk sometimes, too, when he’s not a brooding, moody, judgmental drunk. Not that Dean can judge. 

“It’s not far. Three lights, then on your left. You’ll see the parking,” Sam says. Dean follows Sam’s instructions. The parking lot is poorly lit, but Dean’s prepared for anything out there in the dark. 

Sam helps Jess out of the car, catching her when she stumbles on the curb. She giggles again, then puts her hands to her face, mortified.

“Oh my God, I’m such a cliché,” she says. 

“Nah, you’re fine, sweetheart,” Dean says. “Tell her she’s fine, Sammy.”

“We don’t usually drink that much,” Sam says. 

“We drank last night, too,” Jess says. “We were celebrating.”

“I thought you hated Halloween, Sam,” Dean says.

Sam winces. “I do. We were celebrating my LSATs. That’s like the SATs for law school.”

“He made a 174. That’s high,” Jess says. 

“But we definitely don’t usually drink a lot, especially two nights in a row,” Sam says.

“I think it counts as three,” Jess says. “You were drinking with Dean last night, too. This morning. Both.”

“Well, I’ll be out of your hair before you make it a habit,” Dean says. Jess pouts adorably. 

Sam starts leading their campus tour of three. The thing is, Dean really doesn’t give a shit about what kind of architecture the campus has—Romanesque, apparently?—or when buildings were built or what kind of roofing materials they use. The buildings could be FEMA tents or those portable classrooms they use outside overcrowded schools and Dean wouldn’t care. What matters to him is how animated Sam gets talking about the campus. He’s clearly learned all he can about the history and construction of the buildings, and that makes the long-winded descriptions not only bearable, but enjoyable. Sam’s whole face lights up. 

When they’ve finally made it across the main campus, they have to turn around and go back they way they came to get to the Impala. Jess jumps onto Sam’s back to be carried piggyback. Sam says “oof!” and then groans and fakes a stagger.

“Did you get heavier?” Sam asks. They slowly start walking towards the car. 

“It’s all the tacos,” Jess says. “I ate about twenty pounds of tacos.”

“Uh oh, Sammy. Is your girl too heavy for you?” Dean asks. “It’s okay to admit weakness.”

“Oh, ha ha,” Sam deadpans. “I’ve got her.”

“You’re moving a little slow, is all.”

Jess cackles and digs her feet into Sam’s legs. “You heard the man,” she says. “Giddyup.”

“I’m just saying, you shouldn’t wear yourself out. If you pull a muscle, you won’t be any good to me _or_ Jess,” Dean says. 

“If you’re so worried, you carry her,” Sam says. He stops walking and Jess slides off his back, running over to Dean with a big smile.

“All right, come on up,” Dean says, bracing himself. Jess claps her hands with a little “yay!” and leaps onto his back. She is, in fact, heavier than she looks, but Dean accepts her weight without any kind of groaning and carrying on. They continue walking, Jess occasionally pointing things out or digging in her heels.

“Having fun?” Sam asks.

“A great time,” Dean says. “This is great.”

“He’s my noble steed,” Jess says. 

“Drunk-Jess is great,” Dean adds.

“Thank you,” Jess says. “Yes. Yes I am great.”

Back at the car, Jess drops from Dean’s back to her feet without a wobble. As Dean straightens up, his back cracks in a few places, which makes Sam snicker.

“Getting old,” Sam says.

“Natural consequences of getting thrown through walls,” Dean counters.

“How many times have you been thrown through walls?” Jess asks, suddenly a little too interested in the conversation. 

“Uh, is there a normal amount of times?” Dean asks. Jess shakes her head. “Not that many. Probably.”

“You need to be careful out there, especially if you’re doing it alone,” Sam says, his brow furrowing. 

“Don’t worry about me, Sammy. I’ve always been able to handle things on my own,” Dean says.

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t have to. Dad shouldn’t have left you.”

Dean shrugs, fighting irritation. Sam left him first. “I get by just fine.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Sam says. 

“Well, unless there’s something you plan to do about it, how about you get off my back?” Dean snaps. Jess quietly says, “Oooooo,” her eyes round and interested. 

Sam switches to the wheedling voice. “Dean—”

“No, Sam. That’s enough. You know why I’m on my own. I’m not giving you any shit about your choices, so how about you stop giving me shit about mine?” Dean says. He’s so tired, suddenly. “Let’s just go back to your place, okay?”

At first, Sam looks like he’s going to argue, but then he sighs and lets his shoulders slump. “Okay, Dean. Whatever you want.”

They’re piling back into the Impala when it hits Dean. Shit, _Dad_. Dean realizes that he hadn’t thought about Dad in hours, and he might have gone the rest of the evening without thinking about him if Sam hadn’t brought him up. Guilt starts to creep in. He shouldn’t have agreed to wait for Sam. He should have insisted they left last night. He should have looked for Dad on his own. He should leave tonight. He _will_ leave tonight, as soon as they get back to the apartment.

As Dean winds his way through Palo Alto's boring streets—no directions needed, now that he’s got the map in his head—his resolve starts to flag. If he can hold out for thirty-six more hours, he’ll have Sam with him when he goes. If he can just wait until Monday, he won’t have to do it alone. He’d have accomplished what he came here for: Sam, back in the Impala’s passenger seat where he belongs. He can mend a little of the psychological damage from three years ago, maybe put a bandaid on the two long years of silence. It’s a convoluted mental journey for such a short drive. 

Beside him, Sam sits silently and stares out the window. That’s nothing new; Dean can think of dozens of long drives where they barely spoke at all. Dean has waited out the seething quiet of an angry teenage Sam. He knows when to keep his mouth shut because Sam’s working through a problem in his head. This silence feels more loaded, but Dean isn’t in a rush to break it.

Dean pulls into the same parking spot as before. Sam offers Jess a hand to help her from the back seat, but she seems to have sobered up. Her eyes are sad again. Dean doesn’t know her well enough to interpret the look she gives him, so he just follows her and Sam up to the apartment. Jess goes straight into the kitchen for a bottle of water, leaving Sam and Dean alone to awkwardly not look directly at each other. 

“Look, I’m sorry—” Sam starts, before Dean cuts him off.

“I can’t, Sammy,” Dean says, bone-weary. “I’m too tired, man.”

Sam clearly wants to say more on the subject, but he nods his agreement. “We should probably make it an early night.”

“Yes, please,” Jess says, walking back in from the kitchen. “The tequila headache found me.”

“Do you need anything?” Sam asks Dean.

“Nah, I’m good. You kids go on to bed,” Dean says. 

“Goodnight,” Jess says. “Knock on our door if you need something, okay?”

“Sure. Night, Jess,” Dean says, then to Sam, “Night, bitch.”

“Night, jerk.”

Dean turns off the lamps, but he doesn’t reassemble the makeshift couch-bed. Instead, he sits in the dark with his guilt and regret. He falls asleep like that, waking up to the grey pre-dawn light with a serious crick in his neck and the desperate need to take a piss. He finds his way to the small bathroom and does just that, then he brushes his teeth with the red toothbrush and splashes some water on his face. He looks at himself in the mirror and notes that he looks like shit. 

Coffee will probably help. He spends an unreasonable amount of time figuring out Jess and Sam’s coffee maker, which has too many buttons and settings. Even when he gets it figured out, the resulting coffee isn’t drinkable. It tastes metallic and sour, like the sink water. Dean dumps the pot and cleans everything up. This time, he pours the water from the Brita pitcher in the fridge, and the result is an actual decent cup of coffee. He takes a cup back to the living room and drinks it in the gradually brightening room. 

Sam comes out of the bedroom before the sun is fully up, wearing just a pair of sweatpants. He stops outside his door and stretches. He’s put on more muscle then Dean realized. Dean quickly scans Sam’s body for new scars and feels surprised when he doesn’t find any. He knows Sam wouldn’t be able to say the same about him. Dean isn’t ashamed of his body by any stretch—he’s not blind; he knows he’s objectively hot and the physical activity of hunting keeps him fit—but some days he looks at himself in the mirror and feels more like a quilt than a 26-year-old man. 

“Hey,” Sam says, catching Dean looking at him. “You sleep okay?”

Dean shrugs. “Kinda passed out sitting up on the couch.”

“Is that coffee?” 

“Yeah. There’s more in the pot.”

Sam nods his thanks and shuffles into the kitchen to pour coffee for himself. When he comes back in, he sits on the other end of the couch. He closes his eyes as he takes a drink from his mug.

“That’s good,” Sam says. “You found the Brita pitcher?”

“For this pot, I did. What’s wrong with your water, anyway? It tastes like shit,” Dean says.

“Old pipes, I guess. We keep talking to the super to try to get some kind of filter put on the pipes coming in, but so far, no go. Rent’s cheap for California, at least.”

“At the cost of lead poisoning, but hey, can’t have it all, right?” 

Sam laughs. “It’s not the worst water I’ve ever tasted.”

“Oh, hell no,” Dean agrees. “Monroe, Louisiana.”

“It was _yellow_ ,” Sam says. 

“And the whole town smelled like cabbage from the paper mills, remember?” 

“That motel was so shitty, and the only place to eat was— what was it? Square burgers, not Whitecastle.”

“Krystal,” Dean says. “I think it’d been there since the ’60s.”

“The oil they cooked the fries in sure tasted like it,” Sam says.

“Man, that place messed up your guts,” Dean says. “We went through a whole bottle of Pepto before Dad got back.”

“Yeah, good times,” Sam says. 

Dean laughs a little as he drinks more of his coffee. He forgot how much he missed this part of it, the waking up in the morning and shooting the shit over coffee with somebody he didn’t have to explain himself to. Sam knows all his inside jokes, gets all his pop culture references. Sam knows the ugly parts, too, which go beyond the job itself. He was there for the bad motels, the long stretches where Dad would disappear and they didn’t know if he was alive or dead, getting shunted town-to-town and school-to-school. None of this is something he could tell someone, or that they’d be able to really understand even if he tried. 

“So, what’re we doing today?” Dean asks. 

“I have some school work I need to finish,” Sam says. “If I’m missing classes next week, I want to be ahead of the work.”

Part of Dean still gets a little thrill from Sam willingly skipping school to come with him, but the big brother part of him feels guilty enough to ask, “I’m not screwing up your grades or anything, right?”

Sam shakes his head. “I’m mostly done. I’ll have finals, but it’s just a couple papers and a group project. I’m going to get the papers finished today.”

Three years ago, Dean would have cracked a joke, but his knee jerk response now is just pride. “Cool. I can entertain myself.”

“Maybe you can entertain Jess, too,” Sam asks. “I can get the work done faster if I have a couple hours of quiet.”

“You do realize most guys would _not_ pick me to entertain their girl,” Dean says. 

“Ha ha. I trust you, jerk.”

“Bold words, bitch.”

Sam halfway chokes on a mix of a snort and a laugh. “Okay, fine. I trust Jess. Better?”

“My ego appreciates it,” Dean says. 

Silence stretches out again as they finish their coffee. Dean thinks about getting up for more, but that would mean moving and possibly ending this moment. He can’t even look directly at Sam sitting there beside him. A thousand memories flood Dean’s brain from their life together on the road, some of them brotherly and some of them decidedly not. He mulls over the last time they spoke to each other before this weekend, the last time they saw each other in person, the day Sam left for Stanford, and the fever-dream weeks before. They had one brief stint of everything making sense, everything slotting together, in a way it never had before in Dean’s whole life, and then it ended. Now they have this, brothers drinking coffee in a dark apartment, afraid to touch each other without the veneer of a conflict. Sam is so close, just an arm’s length away, but Dean doesn’t know how to bridge even that small gap. 

“Are you…” Dean starts. 

Sam raises his eyebrows. “Am I… what?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing, never mind.”

“If you say so,” Sam says. 

“I do say so.”

“Okay.”

Dean sighs. He puts the mug down on the coffee table and rests his elbows on his knees. He tucks his chin, scrubs at the hair on his nape with one hand. Anything to not look at Sam.

“Look, it’s obviously something,” Sam says. “So what is it?”

“Are you happy?” Dean asks. 

“Am I— you mean right this minute?”

Dean shakes his head. “I mean in general. Here. School, Jess. Your life.”

“Yeah, Dean. I’m happy,” Sam says.

“Okay. Good. That’s good,” Dean says. “That’s— that’s the important thing.”

“What about you?” Sam asks. 

“Me? C’mon, Sammy, you know me,” Dean says. 

“Yeah. I do know you. That’s why I asked,” Sam says.

Dean makes himself smile. “Why wouldn’t I be happy? I’m living the life. I go where I want, do what I want.”

“Dean, who do you think you’re talking to?” Sam says, shaking his head, eyes squinted in disbelief. “I know what the life is like. You go where Dad tells you to go. You do what Dad tells you to do. You eat crap food. You sleep in shitty motels.”

“I’m helping people, Sammy. I’m saving them.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re happy.” 

“Yeah, well that’s all there is, okay?” Dean says. “That’s it. That’s what I got. And what? You don’t want me to have that either?”

“Dean. Come on, that isn’t what I meant.”

“No, Sam, I’m serious. You got what you wanted,” Dean says, his volume creeping up. “You got out. You got away from Dad. You got away from me. I let you go, okay?”

“Let me go? Is that what you call disappearing in the middle of the night? Or not calling me for two years?” Sam asks.

“Phone works two ways, Sammy.” Dean stands up. He’s not sure where he’s going, but he can’t keep sitting here. He wasn’t trying to pick a fight, and he certainly doesn’t want to rehash the last three years. Not like this. Jesus, his head hurts. He’s tired. He’s so fucking tired. 

“Sit down,” Sam says. He reaches for Dean’s arm, like he’s going to tug him back down to the couch. 

“I need a minute,” Dean says, waving Sam off.

“Sit down, Dean.”

“I said I just _need a minute_ ,” Dean snarls. Sam recoils, pulling his hand back to his chest like he’s touched something scalding. His mouth opens for a moment, lower lip trembling like it did when he was a kid, but then he closes it. Dean can’t stand to look at him, suddenly. He can’t stand the smell of him, still warm from sleep, the coffee on his breath. 

“Dean,” Sam whispers. 

“I’ll get out of your hair today,” Dean says quietly. “I’ll take Jess. We can find a place to shoot some pool, have a beer or something.”

“Dean, come on. Please?”

“I can’t do this, Sammy. Whatever kind of talk you think we’re about to have, I can’t do it,” Dean says. 

“Can you at least tell me why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you disappeared. I had no idea where you were. Two years, Dean. You could’ve been dead, and I wouldn’t have known. Who would’ve even known to tell me?” Sam asks.

“Somebody would’ve figured it out eventually,” Dean mutters. “Besides, I’m not dead. Look at me. I’m just fine. I’m always fine.”

“Until you’re not.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you doing this to punish me?” Sam asks. His voice sounds so young and so hurt that Dean can’t help but turn to look at him. Sam’s eyes brim with tears. All this time, and Dean still can’t stand to see Sam cry. It’s programmed into him – Sam crying, especially if it’s Dean’s fault, is bad. Dean sighs and drops back onto the couch.

“No. _No_ , Sam. I’m not doing anything to punish you or… or hurt you,” Dean says. “I wanted to help you. You wanted to do good at school. You wanted to be normal. This—” Dean gestures between the two of them. “Ain’t nothing normal about this.”

“Safe, Dean. Not normal,” Sam says. 

“Ain’t nothing safe about it, either.”

“I could pretend it didn’t happen if it meant I still had a brother,” Sam says, sounding like the words were ripped out of him.

“That’s the difference between you and me, Sam,” Dean says. “I couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen. That’s why I had to go. That’s why I had to disappear.”

Sam takes a trembling breath. “Do you hate me that much?”

Dean closes his eyes. He inhales, mentally counts to five, exhales. “No, Sammy. I could never hate you. Never. But there’s no place for me here. There’s no place I fit here. Not in this town, not in your life. And it was better like that.”

“Dean, no.”

“Yeah, Sammy. It was. It was better. Look at you.” Dean does look at Sam, his earnest face with two thin tear tracks shining on it in the early morning light, his too-long hair curling on his tan forehead, his broad shoulders and long arms. “Look at your life now. You’ve got Jess. You’re going to law school, man. Me not being in your life is probably the best thing that ever happened to you.” Sam shakes his head in protest, but Dean catches his face between both hands, holding it still. He looks Sam right in his eyes. “It is, and you know it.”

“You weren’t supposed to leave me here alone,” Sam says in much too small a voice. 

“You aren’t alone. You’ve got your girl. She’s a good one, Sammy. You gotta keep her. You don’t let me fuck that up for you.” Dean might be crying a little now, too, but he can’t release Sam’s face to wipe his own. Instead, he rests his forehead against Sam’s. He feels the heat of Sam’s skin seeping into his palms. Sam’s warm, coffee-tinged breath puffs against Dean’s face. Something inside Dean’s chest rips itself open, the edges ragged and bloody, and even though he just told Sam not to let him fuck it up, he fucks it up anyway.

Dean tilts Sam’s face up and kisses him. He doesn’t know if the tears he tastes are his or his brother’s. Sam’s lips part under Dean’s, the barest hint of tongue before Sam’s teeth graze Dean’s lower lip, then gently nip. He was always like that, before he left for college and during that one visit his freshman year. He always found a way to sink his teeth into some part of Dean. In the last weeks before Stanford, Dean’s body was a map covered in crescent moon bruises and vivid red suck marks. He didn’t know why Sam was so dead-set on leaving his mark, until he realized Sam was actually leaving his mark _behind_.

Running his thumbs over Sam’s cheekbones, Dean kisses him deeply. Sam cups the back of Dean’s head with his left hand, the right catching Dean by the wrist and holding it. Sun filters in through the window. Dean sees red through his eyelids as a beam of sunlight falls on their faces. He feels lit up, like this was the spark he needed to come alive again. Outside, a bird sings a repeating three-note song, a dog barks, and someone slams a car door, but none of that matters. Sam’s mouth on his mouth. Sam’s hands on his skin. Sam’s tongue, his teeth, his tears. 

The bedroom door creaks as it opens. Dean and Sam abruptly pull apart, an ingrained habit that turns out to serve them well this time. Jess comes out of the bedroom, yawning and stretching with her arms up above her head. She pauses when she’s in full view of the sofa, her sleepy smile freezing on her face, then slowly fading. Dean’s heart beats a staccato rhythm against his sternum. Jess’s eyes move over Sam’s face, then flick to Dean’s and do the same. He unconsciously puts his hand up to his cheek; it comes away wet. 

He can see Jess wrestling with what to say, whether or not to ask why he and Sam are both sitting on the couch crying at each other—just crying, hopefully she just thinks it’s crying—and deciding _not_. Her mouth presses into a sympathetic line. A little wrinkle of worry appears between her brows. She doesn’t say anything, though. She just goes into the kitchen. Through the door, Dean can see her empty the dregs from the coffee pot and go about making a fresh pot. 

Dean risks a look at Sam. His eyes are wide and wet. His mouth is an invitation. He looks shocked, confused, but not guilty. That’s what gets Dean; Sam doesn’t look even remotely guilty. 

By the time Jess’s pot of coffee is done, Dean and Sam have both managed to pull themselves together. Their faces are dry again and they sit awkwardly at opposite ends of the couch. Jess comes in with her coffee and plops herself right between them. 

“So,” she says, “what’s the plan here, boys?”

Sam, the genius future-lawyer boy wonder, brilliantly says, “Uh. What?”

Jess rolls her eyes. “The plan. For the day. You’re working on your papers for a while, right? So what are Dean and I doing today?”

“You, uh,” Sam says. He turns to look at Dean, who grabs that baton.

“We’re going to a bar,” Dean says. “I feel like playing some pool.”

“Okay. We have a couple of decent bars around here,” Jess says, blowing on her coffee before taking a sip.

“Nah. We’re not going to a decent bar. We’re going to a dive bar,” Dean says.

“Oh? We are?”

“Yeah. Cheaper beer, better atmosphere, and I’m not fighting Ivy League frat boys for access to the pool tables,” Dean says. “Do you know how to play?”

“Not really. I’m a fast learner,” Jess says. Sam’s mouth quirks. 

“What? You got something to say, Sammy?” Dean asks.

“Nope. Nothing at all. Just trying to picture you teaching Jess to play pool,” Sam says.

Dean grins. “Too bad you’re so invested in this whole school thing. You could join us.” 

Sam shakes his head. “No. I have to finish these papers.”

“Okay. On that note, I’m calling dibs on the shower,” Dean says. He hops up and grabs his duffle before anyone can argue. He has to get a door in between himself and Sam, himself and Jess. Once that door is closed, he leans against it and closes his eyes, head hanging. _No, no, no._ He didn’t come here for this, to pull Sam back into their mess. 

Or maybe he did. Maybe he knew as soon as he pointed the Impala in the direction of Palo Alto what he was getting into. As much as he feared Sam slamming the door in his face, maybe he also _hoped_ for it, too. Sam could be strong where Dean is weak. Sam could say ‘no’ where Dean only knows how to say ‘yes’. Sam, with his new life and beautiful girlfriend, wouldn’t risk it all for Dean, where Dean would give his heart, his body, his soul if Sam asked for it.

No hot shower this morning. Dean showers Marine-style, a quick and efficient scrub under lukewarm water. He skips shaving again, though he’ll need to do it tomorrow, or Dad will have something to say about it when they find him. Clean boxers, same dirty jeans, grey tee, and he’s good to go. As he comes out of the bathroom, Jess and Sam are having a heated conversation in the other room. He can’t make out most of what they’re saying, because they’re both keeping their voices down, but he recognizes Sam’s defensive tone. 

Dean steps out of the line of sight of the doorway and waits for the voices to die down. He only catches a few words, but he’s pretty sure Jess invokes his name more than once. Eventually, they must notice the shower has stopped, because Jess shushes Sam. Dean takes that as his cue to stride into the living room like nothing’s wrong. 

“Shower’s free,” he says. Only Jess is facing him, shifted into the spot where he had been sitting, but he can read tension in the line of Sam’s back, the rigid set of his shoulders. Jess looks worn out, like it’s late night, not early morning. He can see from the way her eyes flick to Sam’s face that they’re having a silent conversation, possibly an argument. Sam’s spine straightens even more, a Marine-trained ramrod, but Jess sets her jaw, jutting out her chin. After a long, uncomfortable—for Dean, anyway—pause, Sam stands and storms into the bedroom without speaking to Dean. 

When the bedroom door slams behind Sam, Jess points to Sam’s empty seat and stares hard at Dean. “Sit.”

“Uh. I don’t think I want to get in the middle of—”

“Sit,” she hisses at him, with another fierce point at the couch cushion. Dean’s eyes widen and he practically scurries into place. Ask him later, and he’ll say her voice reminded him too much of Dad’s, but the truth is, she just sounded damn scary. 

“Okay,” Dean says. He isn’t sure what to do with his hands. Or his legs, come to think of it. He props one foot on the opposite knee, tries to rest his elbow on it, but under Jess’s gaze, nothing he does feels natural. 

“You and Sam cannot keep doing this,” Jess says. Dean’s heart plummets into his stomach, which promptly threatens to bring back up his coffee, until Jess says, “I know you two have baggage from how you grew up, but you can’t keep taking it out on each other like this. It isn’t healthy.”

“It’s not like that,” Dean says, mentally kicking himself, because her assuming that it’s just him and Sam being fucked up in a _brotherly_ way is a good thing, right? 

“Look, I know you’re damaged—”

“Hey!” Dean interjects. Jess stares him back into silence.

“You meaning the both of you, Dean,” she clarifies. “Sam won’t tell me everything. He probably isn’t even telling me very much of anything, and I think half of what he’s said either isn’t true or is a _highly_ edited version. He does a good job of playing it close to the chest. You, on the other hand. Oh boy, I could feel the damage coming off you right away.”

“Gee, thanks,” Dean says. 

“I know your dad’s some kind of… I don’t know. Sam never called him a grifter, but that’s definitely what he sounds like.” Dean starts to say something, but she holds up one hand. “And spare me, please, the defensiveness. From what Sam told me the other night, your father doesn’t deserve whatever you’re about to say on his behalf.”

Dean wants to argue. He should argue. No, he _has_ to argue. His mouth doesn’t open, though. No sound comes out.

“See, when you showed up in our apartment in the middle of the night, I thought you were some kind of junkie. Maybe you were here for drugs, maybe you were going to ask Sam for money. I made some assumptions that were probably pretty fair, given the circumstances. Yes?” she asks Dean. He tilts his head to the side and shrugs to indicate, _Yeah, fair._ “And Sam has always seemed so put together. I assumed, wrongly, this was just your baggage, and I didn’t want you laying it at Sam’s door.”

“I wouldn’t,” Dean says, even though he probably would. He has, in fact. “I wouldn’t on purpose,” he amends. 

“And that’s exactly what he told me. He said he hadn’t told me much about you, about the things you did for him, what it was like for you growing up, because it would’ve shed some light on parts of his history he didn’t want to talk about, but also because he didn’t think I had a right to know your private business. Maybe he’s right about that,” Jess says.

“I don’t have a lot of my own private business,” Dean says. “It’s mostly other people’s secrets I’ve gotta keep.” 

“Anyway, Sam told me that most of the time, the only thing standing between him and the worst of the damage was you,” she says. “Please prove him right, Dean.”

“I’ll try,” Dean says, his voice breaking. His throat feels thick as he tries to fight back a tear. “I swear to God, I’m gonna try.”

“Okay,” Jess says, smiling suddenly.

“Okay? Just like that?”

“That’s all I needed to say.”

Dean exhales loudly. “Jesus, Jess. Just hit me with a baseball bat next time and get that shit out of the way.” She laughs loudly. It’s not a pretty, public-face kind of laugh like a lot of girls do in front of guys. She isn’t trying to impress him. She’s just laughing at him, and it’s nice, the way she kind of snorts in the middle of it. 

“So, a dive bar, huh?” she asks, once she gets the laugher under control.

“The smokier, the better,” Dean says. 

“California banned indoor smoking in 1995.”

“Trust me, it’ll still be smoky.”

“And what’s gonna be on the jukebox?” Jess asks.

“All the classics. Zeppelin, the Stones, all of that, but some slow stuff, too. Stuff you can dance to.”

Jess has a lot of opinions about jukebox music, apparently, because they quickly get caught up in a discussion of the best and worst music they’ve ever heard in a bar. Maybe Sam seems surprised to find Dean and Jess talking about classic rock when he comes out, but he recovers quickly. Jess gives him a kiss as she goes in to take her shower, leaving Dean and Sam alone. 

As soon as they hear the shower start, Sam is back on the sofa, grabbing Dean by the front of his shirt and hauling him into a fierce kiss. Dean lets Sam manhandle him however he wants. Sam drags Dean on top of him and grabs a fistful of Dean’s shirt, rucking it up so his other hand can slide along Dean’s skin. Dean is instantly aware that he has to be the one to keep an ear out on the shower, because Sam is half gone already, kissing Dean, mouthing at his throat, a graze of teeth and a slide of tongue. 

“Sam,” Dean manages. “Sammy. We can’t, we can’t.”

“We can,” Sam mouths into Dean’s neck. “We are.”

“No, man. We can’t. You’ve gotta stop.” Dean tries to pull away, but he isn’t very good at it. Telling Sam ‘no’ when he’s like this is not in Dean’s skillset. Sam tugs the neck of Dean’s tee to the side and bites his collarbone, which is a better way to get Dean to say, “Oh God, Sammy,” than it is to get him to say, “Stop.”

“We’ve got ten minutes. At least ten minutes,” Sam pants. He jerks his hips up. Dean’s eyes roll back in his head as Sam’s rock hard erection drags against Dean’s half-hard dick through two layers of denim. Dean can’t stifle his groan or stop himself from grinding down against Sam. He tries to keep his hands off Sam, brace himself against the couch. He finally gives up and allows himself to bury his hands in Sam’s hair, holding Sam’s head still so they can kiss. He can’t stop the tide, but maybe he can slow it down and keep them both from drowning. If nothing else, he can avoid coming in his pants like a teenager from five minutes of grinding. 

Sam just seems so desperate, so hungry, like he’s trying to get as much of Dean as he can in the few minutes they have. It’s the kind of hunger that comes from knowing there will not be more later. Dean knows that hunger all too well, though he always tried to spare Sam from it. He never thought he’d be the source of it. 

“Sam, Sammy,” Dean murmurs against Sam’s hair. Sam is busy biting the join of Dean’s neck and shoulder. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.”

“Eight minutes,” Sam says, teeth to Dean’s skin. “Maybe five.”

“You’re coming with me tomorrow. I’m not leaving without you,” Dean says.

“It’s not the same,” Sam insists.

“It’ll be better. No rushing. No sneaking around,” Dean says.

Sam shakes his head and rolls his hips. “It’s not _real_ out there. It’s real here. This is where I live. You’re here, in my life. That’s real.”

“Sammy,” Dean says. God, his heart hurts. “Aw, Sammy. C’mon. It’s real out there there.”

Sam lifts his head and looks at Dean with wide eyes, huge pupils edged in hazel. “Dean, _we’re_ barely real out there.”

The water stops. Sam clings to Dean for a few more panting breaths. Dean forces himself to relax his grip on Sam’s hair. They slide apart to opposite ends of the couch. Dean takes a second to straighten his clothes, tug on a flannel to cover any marks around his shirt collar area. Sam does absolutely nothing to make himself look less disheveled. His long limbs sprawl across half the couch, and Dean knows there’s a word for how his brother looks, but he can’t remember it.

Dean tries not to look at Sam, not that Sam makes any particular effort to not stare at Dean. He’s still sprawling and staring and generally looking like a hot mess when Jess comes out, dressed in a pink v-neck sweater and fitted jeans. Little pink hearts dangle from her ears. She cuts her eyes over to Sam, but she doesn’t comment on his appearance. Instead, she raises her eyebrows at Dean.

“I was thinking we could get some breakfast before we jump right to the beer,” she says. “We can go ahead and get out of Sam’s hair.”

“He’s got plenty of it,” Dean hears himself saying. He sounds so normal to himself, like he wasn’t almost caught making out with his brother… by his brother’s girlfriend… _twice_.

“Ha ha,” Sam says. “Original.”

“I can’t help if it’s low-hanging fruit, Sammy,” Dean says.

“It’s _Sam_ ,” Sam says. “Have fun, you two.”

Dean slides his wallet into his back pocket as Jess grabs her purse. He gives Sam a searching look, but Sam just gazes back, mild and unflappable. He still looks like he walked right out of a brothel in a French film. 

“See ya later,” Dean says. 

Jess has some spring in her step, bouncing down the stairs. Dean can’t criticize the view, though the amount of energy seems questionable. She is extremely pleased to be able to sit shotgun in the Impala, though Dean gets to enjoy a second of amusement as she reaches for a shoulder belt that doesn’t exist.

“Lap belt only, sweetheart,” Dean says. 

“Style over safety?” Jess asks.

“Always,” Dean says. “Hell, that’s pretty much the family motto.”

Jess laughs as Dean revs the engine. They peel out of the parking lot. Jess offers him a few instructions, but he already recognizes most of the street names. Dean finds street parking that doesn't require him to parallel park, which is great, since the Impala is many things, all of them awesome, but ‘easy to parallel park’ isn’t on the list. This must be the coffee shop Sam and Jess like to go to. Back To the Grind looks funky and artsy, just like Dean would expect from a college town.

“If you think the muffin was good, you should try the hot breakfast sandwiches,” Jess says.

“Good?”

“How do you feel about chorizo?”

“In general, I always feel good about any and all meat,” Dean says. Jess grins and arches one brow, like she’s waiting for Dean to realize what that sounded like and get flustered or defensive. When he doesn’t, her other eyebrow joins the first, up near her hair line. 

“Huh,” she says.

“So, breakfast sandwiches?” Dean asks.

“Yeah, breakfast sandwiches,” Jess says. “We’ll eat and you can explain the rules of pool to me.”

Jess didn’t exaggerate about the breakfast sandwiches. They’re enormous, made on fresh ciabatta rolls and piled high with eggs, cheese, and sausage. Dean’s also has bell peppers and onions in it. It rocks. He lets Jess talk him into ordering some frou-frou caramel latté thing that’s definitely more sugar than coffee, and that rocks, too, though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone. He does his best to explain the rules of pool, but talking has never been his strong suit. He does better with his hands, demonstrating rather than lecturing.

“It’ll make more sense once we’re at the table,” Dean says, when Jess leans back in her chair, looking amused.

“I’m sure it will,” Jess says. 

“So, you got any thoughts about where to find a real dive around here?”

“Hmm.” Jess taps her fingernail on the side of her giant coffee cup, which just recently held something called a ‘snickerdoodle mocha’. “I might have an idea.”

They get to the bar right as it opens at eleven. Dean isn’t usually the first customer type, and eleven in the morning on a Sunday is a less than ideal time, but at least they won’t have to fight for the pool table. Dean orders them both glasses of “whatever is cheap and on tap,” and then racks the balls. He explains the rules of the game while Jess drinks her beer and listens attentively, occasionally nodding while Dean demonstrates how to hit the cue ball with enough force, at the right angle, to send two stripes spinning into their various pockets. 

“That looks complicated,” Jess says.

“Nah. You just have to get a feel for it,” Dean says. “C’mon. Take a shot.”

Jess sets her beer down and moseys to the table while Dean racks the balls again. She lets Dean put her into the right position, showing her how to hold the pool cue. The first time, she overshoots the cue ball completely. The second time, she hits the cue ball and sends it rocketing into a corner pocket, the rest of the balls untouched. 

“So that’s called a ‘scratch’,” Dean says.

“Okay. How do I not scratch?” Jess asks.

“Aim, for starters. Look down the cue. Look at where on the ball you want to hit. Think about which way it’s gonna spin.” He helps Jess reposition herself. This time, she actually manages to break the racked balls. The nine ball even gets close to one of the side pockets before rolling to an uneventful stop. “Hey! You did it.”

“Almost got one in,” Jess says, with a disappointed sigh. 

“It just takes practice, sweetheart. Watch.” Dean leans around Jess to take a shot. He makes it a little showy, banking a shot when easier ones were available. Jess watches him work his way around the table until all but one of the stripes are in the pockets. Dean intentionally misses the next shot, then holds the cue out to Jess.

“Sure, now that you’ve gotten all those stripes out of the way for me,” Jess grumbles. She takes her time lining up the shot, and this time manages to get the 3 in. She jumps up and down. “I got it!”

“How about I buy us another round while you practice?” Dean says.

“Sounds fair,” Jess says. 

Dean takes an admiring look at her over his shoulder as she leans over the table to line up the cue. Her ass is pretty amazing, in a ‘bounce quarters off it’ kind of way. He grabs two more beers before walking back to the table. 

“Here,” Dean says, handing Jess her beer. The balls have moved around somewhat, but nothing has gone into a pocket. “What do you say we make this interesting?”

“Uh, no thanks,” says Jess.

“We’ll make it fair. A, uh. A handicap, like golf,” Dean says. “How about you just have to sink one ball for everyone one of my three.” 

“What are the stakes?” Jess asks.

“Loser buys beer for the rest of the night,” Dean says. 

“Ouch. Why do I feel like that could get expensive?”

Dean grins. “Only if you lose.”

“Can I add something to the wager?” 

“Sure.”

“Winner gets to ask the loser three questions, and the loser has to answer them truthfully,” Jess says.

“Okay,” Dean says. “You can buy my beer _and_ answer my riddles three.”

Jess holds out her hand. “Shake on it?” 

“Absolutely.” Dean clasps her hand and shakes it firmly, then jerks his head towards the table. “Ladies first. Need me to rack ’em?”

Jess shakes her head. She grabs the rack and starts setting balls into it, then slides it into place neatly, removing it to reveal a perfect triangle. She gets her cue, chalks the tip, and leans comfortably over the table. Before she takes her shot, she looks up at Dean and smiles – a long, slow, dirty Chesire cat smile. Then she breaks neatly with no excess force or energy wasted, and two stripes fly straight into the right corner pocket.

“Guess I’m stripes then,” Jess says, walking around the table to take aim again. 

“Son of a bitch,” Dean says. 

One after another, Jess sinks the stripes with the air of a seasoned professional. She even does a jump shot to hop the 12 ball over the 3 and into the side pocket. Dean’s mouth hangs open, beer forgotten. As Jess knocks the last stripe into its pocket, she looks up at Dean and winks.

“Right corner pocket,” Jess says, lining up the 8. She hits it with force. It banks off the left side of the table and rolls neatly into the right corner pocket.

“You hustled me,” Dean says.

Jess hangs up her pool cue and picks up her beer. “Don’t feel bad, sweetheart. You aren’t the first Winchester brother I’ve hustled at pool. Two out of two.” 

“Okay, one, I have gotta hear that story some time. Two, I cannot believe you just hustled me! And three, you didn’t have to look so hot doing it,” Dean says.

Jess laughs, the same snorty real laugh he’d enjoyed that morning. She takes a seat and picks up her beer, holding it up for a toast. “To two out of two,” she says. Dean clinks his glass to hers. 

“Alright,” he says, after they’ve finished their second beers. “What’re the questions?”

“I never said the winner had to ask the questions right away,” Jess says.

“Perfect,” Dean says. 

“I think we’re ready for our third round,” Jess says, smiling serenely as she holds up her empty glass. 

While Dean is at the bar, he orders a plate of cheese fries, too. He and Jess make smalltalk until the fries arrive, mostly talking about her major—history, with a minor in medieval studies—and the various weird places Dean has visited. He’s seen the Leaning Tower of Niles in Illinois, the Georgia Guidestones, and the biggest ball of twine in the country – twice. He shocks Jess by telling her he _hasn’t_ visited the Winchester House. 

“It’s not really haunted,” Dean says.

“How would you know if you haven’t even been there?” Jess asks. 

“I just know these things,” Dean says. 

Jess looks dubious. “So you just happen to know whether or not a place you’ve never been is haunted?”

“Yup,” Dean says. One of the waitresses delivers the fries, then, sparing Dean from having to explain. Jess squints at him suspiciously as she shoves cheese-drowned fries into her mouth.

“Maybe you’re just afraid of haunted houses,” Jess says, through a mouth of cheese fries. “Maybe that’s your cover story.”

“That’s me, all right, scared shitless of Casper,” Dean replies. 

“Seriously, though,” Jess says. She pauses as she takes a sip of her beer, leaving cheesy fingerprints on the glass. 

“Seriously? As in, you want to waste one of your three questions?”

Jess nods. “Seriously. How do you know a place isn’t haunted?”

“As in how do I specifically know WInchester House isn’t haunted? Or as in how does a person in general know if any place is haunted?” Dean asks. 

Jess takes a second to think it through, which Dean likes—she’s being respectful, not flippant—before clarifying, “Both, if it will only cost me one question, but the latter if it’ll cost me two.”

“Practical girl. I like it,” Dean says. He does, in fact, like it. He likes _her_ , a whole lot. “You know what? Since you’re not being a dick about it, I’ll give you a two-fer.” Jess smiles. “Okay, so I know Winchester House isn’t haunted by reputation. It’s too high profile, so I’d have heard.”

“Okay,” Jess says.

“Just okay? No pushback?” 

Jess shrugs. “Nope. You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

“I do,” Dean agrees. 

“So what about hauntings in general?” Jess slowly picks up a cheese fry and brings it to her mouth without really looking down at the plate. She ends up with a smudge of cheese on her lip. 

“You can check for stuff like EMF,” Dean says. When Jess looks at him blankly, he explains, “Electromagnetic fields. See? And here you thought Sammy was the smart one.”

“He is the smart one in a lot of ways,” Jess says.

“Well, yeah, no argument here,” Dean says.

“But not about everything, I guess.”

Dean cocks an eyebrow at Jess. “Actually, Sam knows all of this stuff, too.”

Jess laughs at that. “Are you getting me back for the pool thing?”

“Nope. You hustled me fair and square, sweetheart,” Dean says.

“Sam doesn’t know anything about ghosts,” Jess insists.

“Oh yeah, he does,” Dean says.

“That’s ridiculous!” 

“It’s also true.”

Jess rolls her eyes as she snags another cheese fry. “That’s bullshit,” she says with her mouth full. 

“Hey, believe me or don’t. You asked for the truth, I’m giving you the truth.”

“Whatever. So how else do you know a place is haunted?” she asks, clearly dismissing the Sam-related line of discussion.

“Cold spots. The temperature’ll drop. You might be able to see your breath. Other than that, research,” Dean says with a grimace. “Violent deaths at the location or of people connected to that location. With houses, a lot of turnover. People moving in, staying a few weeks or months, and then leaving, over and over.”

“Can you see them?”

“What, ghosts? Sure, if they want to be seen. They can pop in and out, but they usually have to pop back in to interact with stuff in the physical world,” Dean says.

“This is fascinating,” Jess says. “I’ve always wondered what it was like to be crazy.”

“Believe me or don’t believe me. I really don’t give a rat’s ass,” Dean says. “I’ll go grab us another round.” He stands, but Jess’s hand darts out to grab his wrist.

“Wait. Don’t be mad,” Jess says.

“I’m not mad. I’m just not gonna try to convince you it’s the truth. If you want to think I’m crazy, that’s fine. If you want to think Sam doesn’t know about any of this shit, that’s fine, too. I ain’t mad about it, but I’m not gonna waste my breath trying to change your mind, either,” Dean says.

Jess’s hand is still wrapped around Dean’s wrist, and she doesn’t seem like she’s letting go any time soon. “Oh my God. You’re serious. You really do believe in this stuff.”

“It’s not about belief if you’ve seen it with your own eyes.”

“And you have. Seen it, I mean.”

“More times than I can count,” Dean says. “It’s an ugly job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

“Dean,” Jess says. She sounds slightly out of breath, like she’s been running or she’s about to cry. “What does your dad do for a living? What do _you_ do for a living?”

Before Dean can decide if he’s really going to answer that question—and count it as question number two—or not, the ubiquitous rock music on the jukebox quiets. In its place, Dean hears the jazzy opening piano riff of _Crazy_ by Patsy Cline. He grins at Jess and twists his wrist in her grip. In a flash, he’s free, and she’s the one whose wrist is trapped. 

“You wanna dance?” Dean asks.

“What?” Jess asks.

Dean points at the ceiling and spins his index finger in a circle to indicate _hey, you hear this music, right?_ “Dance,” he says. “C’mon.” 

He tugs her to an open portion of the room that might qualify as a dance floor if this bar were that kind of joint. Dean slides his palm up her wrist to capture her hand in his, his other hand going to her waist. Jess’s face is a mixture of confusion and amusement. She lets him lead her in a slow, but serviceable two-step while Pasty croons _“I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted.”_

“Did you know Patsy recorded this in one take?” Dean asks, pulling Jess a little closer.

“I did not,” Jess says. 

“That’s what makes it so magical,” he says. As Patsy sings _”Worry, why do I let myself worry?”_ , he spins Jess out and then gathers her back into his arms again, closer this time. They sway side-to-side, hands clasped and bodies pressed together. A bright pink flush rises up on her cheeks. 

_“And I’m crazy for lovin’ you,”_ Patsy finishes. Dean can relate. 

“Salt and iron,” Dean tells Jess.

She blinks at him slowly, trying to parse what he’s saying. “What?”

“Ghosts,” Dean says. He’s still holding Jess snug against his body. “Salt and iron stops them. They can’t cross it. You can shoot ’em or hit ’em with it, and it’s kinda like hitting a reset button.”

“You… you what?”

A loud rock song Dean doesn’t recognize—recent, probably—fills the empty space left after Patsy’s voice. Dean still doesn’t release Jess, though they aren’t dancing anymore.

“Doesn’t get rid of 'em for good. You’ve gotta salt and burn the bones for that,” he says, leaning in very close to Jess’s ear. 

“Burn. The bones,” Jess repeats.

“Of course, sometimes there’s no bones. Then it’s usually something else keeping them here.”

“Keeping… the ghost… here.”

“Mmhmm.” Dean’s lips brush Jess’s ear. “Something tying them to life. Could be a lock of hair or a wedding ring, could be a little blood stain underneath the carpet.”

“What’s happening right now?” Jess whispers. Her voice quavers, even at such a low volume.

“I’m telling you how to get rid of a ghost, just like you asked me.” Her hair smells like the shampoo from the apartment shower, but the fruity-floral notes are there, too. Perfume or lotion, or it’s just her skin. She also smells a little like Sam.

“That’s— that isn’t what I asked,” she says.

“What can I say? I’m a generous guy. I gave you that answer for free.”

Jess comes back to herself then, jerking out of Dean’s arms. She stands there for a second staring at him before hurrying off in the direction of the ladies room. Dean orders another round of beer so it’s waiting for Jess when she returns, still looking a little pink around her cheeks and ears. 

“So,” Dean says.

“So?” Jess asks.

“Did I answer the question good enough?”

Jess nods. “I… I think so.”

“’Cause that’s how I know Winchester House isn’t haunted,” Dean says. “And if you don’t believe me, now you know how to check for yourself. Two more questions.”

“Okay,” Jess says. “Okay, um. How long have you known about ghosts?”

“My whole life, near about. Probably five or six.”

“Jesus. Why so young?”

“Had to help my dad. Needed to keep Sammy safe,” Dean says, shrugging. 

“So your dad is a Ghostbuster?” Jess asks.

Dean lifts one eyebrow. “Is that really how you wanna spend your last questions?”

“Wait. No. Ignore that one,” Jess says. 

“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” Dean says. “Why don’t you ask me what you really wanted to ask me?”

Jess’s face gets all pained and squinty, and she downs her beer. “Maybe we should get shots.”

“Hey, the deal was I’d pay for beer, not liquor.”

“I can buy my own liquor.”

“Also, it’s like noon,” Dean points out. “You really want to get shitfaced at noon?” Jess shakes her head. “Then just go ahead and ask.”

Jess takes a deep breath, then lets it out as a long, loud sigh. She opens her mouth, but closes it again, going through the same deep breath and sigh process a couple of times. Dean waits patiently, leaning back in his chair and watching her face go through a complex array of emotions. 

Finally, she says, “You and Sam. Something happened.”

“Yeah, that’s not a question,” Dean says.

“No, it’s not,” Jess says. “Something happened before he came to Stanford. I didn’t really put the pieces together until I met you, but— you and Sam. Something happened to you. Between you?” Dean keeps his face blank. “Were you, like… Shit, this sounds really fucked up, I’m sorry, but I think… did you and Sam have a… a relationship?”

Dean hasn’t ever said it aloud to another person who wasn’t Sam, and he’s not sure her wording is correct, anyway. A _relationship_. It’s a strange way to put it, what they had, what they were to each other. What they still are to each other, if Dean’s being honest, or what they could be again with very little provocation. 

A minute passes, then another. Dean doesn’t answer, though of course with a question like this, not answering is pretty much an answer. Jess sits silently, waiting for him to speak. Dean huffs a loud sigh and leans forward to prop his elbows on the table. Jess unconsciously does the same, leaning in to hear him.

“What happened with me and Sam, nobody else could understand it. You could try, but if you weren’t there to see it, how it was. All those years on the road together, and half the time it was just me and him, you know?” Dean says. Jess nods, a tiny movement. “I kind of raised the kid. I don’t know if he told you that. Mom was dead, Dad was gone half the time, drunk when he wasn’t gone.”

“No, Sam never told me that,” Jess says softly.

“Yeah, figured he wouldn’t, but that’s all right,” Dean says. “I just need you to understand that you don’t have a fucking _clue_ how fucked up this shit is. It goes so deep, you can’t even see the bottom. Hell, I’ve been in it my whole life, and I can hardly see the bottom of it all. Only one who knows what that’s like besides me is Sam. Sam’s all I ever had.” Jess starts to nod, but Dean catches her by the point of her chin and holds her head still. “No. I need you to understand this. Sam’s all I ever had, and I let him go, and it fucked me up bad. I think maybe it fucked him up, too.” 

Dean can see his words sink in, can watch her process what she’s hearing. Understanding blooms in her eyes. Even knowing enough to ask the question, she clearly hadn’t fully believed Sam and Dean had a history beyond just family. She believes it now. The pink blush returns to her cheeks. Dean still has her chin in his hand; he can feel the heat rising up in her skin.

“You doing okay?” Dean asks. She obviously isn’t, but he has to ask anyway to give her the opportunity to lie. He releases her chin so she can compose herself. He watches it happen, her face settling incrementally back into pleasant neutrality. 

“I think we should go see a movie,” Jess says.

“Uh. What?” 

“I think we should go see a movie,” Jess repeats. “Maybe _Walk the Line_. I bet you like Johnny Cash.”

“You want to go see a movie. Now.” 

“Yup. We can’t go home and bother Sam, I’ve already hustled you at pool, and if I have any more beer, I’m going to regret it,” Jess says. “So, movie.”

Dean settles the tab, and they go to a movie. As much as he appreciates Johnny Cash—yeah, Jess guessed right—his mind can’t stay focused on the story. He told Jess about him and Sam, or as good as. She’s not an idiot. She’s probably seen it the whole time. She pegged Dean correctly the moment she first laid eyes on him. He is an addict, but it wasn’t money he came to take from Sam.

He picks at the popcorn Jess passes to him and drinks the enormous Coke. He spends most of the movie watching her from the corner of his eye. Will she revoke her blessing about Sam coming with him to look for Dad? Will she send Dean packing and tell him never to darken their door again? That would be worse than leaving Sam freshman year, Dean realizes. He thought it would be better, leaving Sammy behind with Jess, but now that Dean has spent a weekend in their life, how is he supposed to walk away empty handed?

When the end credits start to roll, Jess looks down at his mostly-full popcorn bucket. “You don’t like popcorn?” 

“Must still be full from these cheese fries,” Dean says. He stands when Jess stands, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.

“God. Are you a girl?” Jess asks, and it’s such a ridiculous and good-natured tease that he has to laugh.

“Nah. That’s Sammy, with his long, luxurious hair,” he says.

“What is it with you and his hair?” Jess says. “It barely covers his ears.”

“Raised by a Marine,” Dean says.

“Oh, so that 5 o’clock-two-days-ago shadow is regulation now?”

“Well. _Pfft._ No. But on me, it looks good.”

“Sam’s hair looks plenty good on Sam,” Jess says. She watches Dean closely for his response, but he has years of experience not showing one.

“Sure,” Dean says, offering Jess a mild smile. In his mind, his hands are buried in Sam’s hair. His skin is in Sam’s teeth. The little hickey over his collarbone thrums in time to his pulse.

“Oh, it’s later than I expected,” Jess says, pulling out her phone. “Sam texted. We can go home.”

 _Home._ Oh, if only. Dean could almost give it all up—the hunt, the thing that killed Mom, their Dad—to call that apartment home. He’d sleep on the sofa. Hell, he’d bunk down on the floor. He’d curl up at the foot of Sam’s bed like a dog if he could make it all stop. He’s just so goddamn tired.

If wishes were horses, he’d still be a son of a bitch.

Dean drives them back to the apartment. Jess is a silent passenger, pink and beautiful. One more night of this, and Dean will be out of her hair. He and Sam will find Dad. Dean will deliver Sam back to Jess safe and sound, and he won’t beg Sam to come with him, and he won’t ask if he can stay.

When Jess opens the apartment door, a wave of Sam-smell hits Dean. The same mix of stress and diligence Dean remembers from Sam’s high school years hangs in the air. It’s a racehorse smell. A high-octane fuel smell. It’s a lit match and an open gas line smell. It makes Dean want to put his mouth on Sam’s tender places – his long neck, the ticklish backs of his knees, the soft skin and strong tendons where his legs meet his groin. 

Why do they have to want each other like Wild Things? _I’ll eat you up, I love you so._

“Hey!” Sam says, practically bouncing into the room. Dean knows this mania all too well. Every project, every paper, every midterm and final, and this Sam reared his caffeinated head. Dean had to scrape him off the walls after a particularly important group project his senior year. That ended with both of them half-dressed on Sam’s bed, making out like it was the answer to all of Sam’s problems. 

_Just once, Dean. Just this once. Please. I’ll never ask again, I promise._

Not the first broken promise and not the last. It led them both here to this moment: Sam almost finished with his degree, Dean still the same drop-out killer Sam couldn’t get away from fast enough.

While Dean has been lost in his memories, Sam and Jess have been making out. Jess seems more pliable than usual, like she knows this about Sam – when working out a problem with his mind eludes him, he needs to work it out with his body. Something in one of his papers hung him up, and that restless energy, those big ideas with nowhere to coalesce, has to land somewhere. 

“I was thinking spaghetti tonight,” Sam’s saying to Jess, in between kisses and the occasional grin at Dean. “Or tacos. We’ve got that ground beef in the freezer. Maybe tacos? Dean, what do you think?”

Sam locks his wild hazel eyes on Dean. His mouth curls up at the corners like it has since he was little. How is it that Dean has seen this boy’s entire life play out in front of him, but it’s still not enough? He would crawl inside Sam’s rib cage. He would live there. He would let Sam take him apart bite by bite and gnaw on his bones just to be inside Sam, be part of him. God, Jess was so right. Dean’s worse than a junkie when it comes to Sam. 

“Dean?” Sam prompts again.

“Yeah, man, that sounds fine,” Dean says. They just had tacos last night, but Sam is a man on a mission and Dean is a man who tells Sam _yes_.

“Babe, we had tacos last night,” Jess reminds Sam.

“Oh yeah,” Sam says. Dean knows Sam remembers. The kid’s an elephant with his memory. If he’s thinking of tacos again, he’s thinking about last night. It’s intentional. 

“Spaghetti’s cool, too,” Dean says. “I’m like a goat, man. I can eat anything. Spaghetti, kudzu, tin cans.”

Jess laughs, but it’s not the real, snorty laugh. It sounds thinner, tinny, like it’s coming through speakers from very far away. She puts her hand on Sam’s chest. That catches his attention and helps ground him somewhat. 

“We can cook together,” Jess says. “You and me.”

“Hey, I can make a mean pot of spaghetti myself,” Dean says.

Jess smiles at him, pinched and insincere. “You’re our guest. Anyway, the kitchen’s so small. Only room for two.”

Not the kitchen, Dean realizes. Their lives, hers and Sam’s. This is Jess’s shot across the bow.

“Actually, if Sammy doesn’t mind me using his computer, I’ve got a little work of my own I need to do,” Dean says. He needs to focus on Dad. He needs to check the news out of Jericho. 

“Sure, man, whatever you need,” Sam says, temporarily mollified by Jess assigning tasks. “You work, we’ll cook.”

“Peachy,” Dean says, popping the ‘p’ at the beginning. 

“You want to use the desk?” Sam asks. 

“Nah, I can use it out here,” Dean says. He wants to keep Sam—and Jess—in his line of sight. Sam disappears into the bedroom to get his laptop. Jess leans against the wall by the kitchen door, arms crossed. She doesn’t scowl or anything, but her expression is cool and unreadable. 

“Here,” Sam says, handing the laptop to Dean. 

“Password?” Dean asks.

“It’s our go-word,” Sam says. “You remember?”

Dean grins. “Of course.” He tries to keep his eyes on the laptop screen as Jess and Sam go into the kitchen, typing in _Poughkeepsie_. Trust Sam to use their ‘get the heck out of Dodge’ word as his password. Sam laughs at something Jess says; Dean searches for any new deaths in or around Jericho.

He finds two, one from the night he and Sam should have left to find Dad, and another from last night. Whatever is doing the killing, most likely a ghost, seems to be picking up speed. Dean itches to grab Sam by the collar, haul him out to the Impala, and book it for Jericho. Screw the interview, screw law school, screw Stanford and Jess and Dean living the rest of his life without his brother by his side. 

Then he hears Sam laugh again. Dean looks up from the laptop to see Sam pulling Jess into a kiss. When the kiss ends, Jess wraps her arms around Sam, and Sam rests his chin on top of her head. He stares out into the living room and makes eye contact with Dean. Heat and hunger simmer in Sam’s expression. As much as Dean thinks he should leave tonight, he knows he can’t steal his brother away from his life like a thief in the night. He can wait sixteen more hours. 

“Hey, mind if I use your printer?” Dean calls into the kitchen.

“Just don’t use it to print out porn!” Sam calls back. Jess snort-laughs. 

“Not even the stuff that was already on here?” Dean asks.

“Ha ha.”

“I’m not judging you or anything, but most guys pick clowns _or_ midgets.”

“Jackass!” Sam yells, over Jess’s cackling laughter. 

Dean grins in the direction of the kitchen as he queues up a few articles and a map of Jericho to print. They’ll be as ready as they can to leave after Sam’s meeting in the morning. Hopefully Dad’ll still be there. Maybe they can wrap things up in just a day or two, and Dean can take Jess up on her offer to stay a little longer, if she still means it. She’s been pretty hot and cold about him, not that he blames her. He’d be hot and cold about him, too, if he were Jess. 

It’s been a while since Dean has cooked spaghetti for anyone—not since Sam left for Stanford, probably—but he doesn’t think it ever took as long as Sam and Jess’s spaghetti seems to take. His sauce definitely didn’t take the number of ingredients theirs seems to require. Dean used jarred sauce, reconstituted canned tomato paste, or even, a few times when the money Dad left them stretched too thin, ketchup packets from fast food places. The Sam and Jess sauce involves fresh garlic, peppers, and ground beef along with the tomatoes. By the time the food is done, Dean’s stomach is growling, and he's exhausted all the research he can do from Sam’s computer. 

Sam and Jess’s kitchen table is a tiny two-seater, so they lay out dinner in the living room. Dean shifts from the couch to a battered upholstered chair, dragging it up to the coffee table. Dinner isn’t just pasta and sauce, which smells great. They’ve also made garlic bread and a salad. Dean smothers a laugh at the salad. Sam always did eat like a rabbit when he had the opportunity. 

“This looks awesome,” Dean says. He means it. He can’t remember the last time he had a home cooked meal, unless microwaving Cup Noodles in a motel room counts. Which it doesn’t.

“We’ve been working on perfecting the sauce,” Jess says. 

“Well, looks like you nailed it,” Dean says. When Sam gestures to Dean’s plate, he holds it out so Sam can pile it up with pasta, sauce, and garlic bread. He doesn’t ask Dean about the salad. Jess passes Dean the jar of parmesan when she notices him eyeballing it. Once he’s managed to shove a mouthful of pasta into his mouth, his eyes roll back in his head. “Oh my God, this is so good.”

“Aw, thanks,” Jess says. 

“Dude, don’t talk with your mouth full,” Sam says. 

“You don’t talk with _your_ mouth full,” Dean says, most definitely talking with his mouth full. Sam rolls his eyes. Jess rolls _her_ eyes. It’s great. 

“Should we shoot for an early night?” Jess asks Sam. “You’ve got your interview.”

“And then we’re heading out to find Dad,” Dean adds. Jess’s lips thin into an unhappy line.

“Yes, you’ve got your trip,” she says. 

“Yeah, we should probably go to bed at a reasonable time,” Sam says. “If I can even sleep. I’m so nervous about that stupid interview.”

“You’re going to do great, babe,” Jess says. She takes his hand and squeezes it. 

“You’re gonna kick it in the ass, just like you always have,” Dean says. “I remember when you were doing your college applications…” He trails off, because it’s the first of Sam’s broken promises. Not the worst of them, but the first of them. “Anyway, they’d be lucky to have you.”

“That’s right,” Jess says. “Your LSAT score is enough to get you in. You’re going to blow them out of the water in the interview.”

“And then you can defend corporate dirtbags and earn a million dollars a year,” Dean says. 

“I’m not going into corporate law,” Sam says. His nostrils flare in distaste. So pissy.

“Well, what kinda law, then?” Dean asks.

“I was thinking I’d like to be a public defender,” Sam says. “I could do a lot of good. Think about how many times we—” He cuts himself off, but Dean can fill in the rest of that thought. _Think about how many times we narrowly missed being arrested. Think about how many hunters who do get arrested._

“That’s pretty cool,” Dean says. “I’m proud of you, Sammy.”

“I’m proud of you, too, baby,” Jess says. She plants a kiss on Sam’s cheek, which makes him smile. 

“Let’s just see what happens tomorrow,” Sam says. 

The rest of their dinner conversation is fairly light. When everyone is done, Dean helps Sam carry the dirty dishes into the kitchen while Jess packs up the leftovers. The apartment doesn’t have a dishwasher, so Sam and Dean stand side by side at the sink, with Dean washing and Sam drying, just like they did growing up. When Dean hands Sam the pasta pot, he bumps Sam’s shoulder with his. Sam bumps him back.

Dean shakes his head, chuckling to himself as he goes to work on the saucepan. Sam bumps Dean again, with his hip this time. A glance up at Dean confirms that Sam is getting himself wound up again. Nerves, probably. Tomorrow’s a big day in more than one way. A good tussle is the best way to blow off that steam for both of them. Dean elbows Sam in the side. Sam elbows Dean back, so Dean has no choice but to ram his shoulder into Sam’s. Sam puts down the pot, grinning at Dean. Dean drops the saucepan in the sink.

“Not in the face,” Dean says. “You’ve got the interview.”

“What’s going on in there?” Jess says.

Sam’s mouth slowly curls up into a Seussian smile. “Hey, babe?” he calls out to Jess. “Can you move the coffee table back?”

“Can I move the what?” Jess asks, right as Sam throws a punch at Dean. Dean expects it, though, and catches Sam’s fist, bringing his knee up to get Sam in the gut. The air goes out of Sam with a soft _oof_.

While Sam is doubled over, Dean circles behind him to grab him in a headlock. As soon as his arm goes around Sam’s neck, Sam uses his height advantage to flip Dean ass over tea kettle. Dead lands in the kitchen doorway with a loud thud.

“What is going on?” Jess yelps. “Sam!”

“We’re just sparring,” Sam says, innocent as a lamb. Dean aims a kick at Sam’s knee. Sam jumps to avoid Dean’s foot, which gives Dean a chance to spin and grab his brother by the ankle. Sam falls on top of Dean, who rolls to pin Sam. 

“Well, stop it!” Jess says. “Somebody’s going to get hurt!”

“Not if we’re doing it right,” Dean says. Sam rolls like a gator, and somehow Dean ends up in an arm bar.

“It’s fine, babe. We do this all the time,” Sam says. 

“What? No you don’t!” Jess squeals. She shoves the coffee table out of the way before Dean’s foot can hit it.

“Growing up, I mean,” Sam explains. Dean torques his body to the left and breaks loose from the arm bar.

“You been practicing?” Dean asks.

“Please,” Sam says. “I don’t need to practice. I know all your moves.” He swings on Dean, who ducks. Dean isn’t fast enough to miss the blow from Sam’s off hand, though. It sends him staggering back, mouth tasting of copper.

“Jesus, Sam, he’s bleeding,” Jess says.

Dean wipes his face with the back of his hand. It leaves a smear of blood. “This ain’t nothing,” Dean says. “Watch the face, Sammy.”

“Sorry. Thought you just meant my face,” Sam says, eyes bright. Dean shakes his head. 

“Besides,” Dean says, dropping down low and sweeping Sam’s legs out from under him. The apartment shakes from how hard Sam lands. “I’m the one that taught you all my moves.”

Sam collects himself and lunges at Dean with a feral roar. He tackles Dean to the ground, pinning Dean’s arms above his head by the wrists. Dean knees Sam in the side, once, twice. Sam bodily flips Dean over, this time locking Dean’s arms behind his back. The hot, hard line of Sam’s dick presses against Dean’s ass. They’re both breathing hard from exertion, and now from arousal. Blood trickles slowly from Dean’s nose.

“Sam. Sam, stop it,” Jess says. She sounds agitated, her voice quavering. “Sam! Let him up.” 

Dean cranes his neck to look over his shoulder to see Jess trying to haul Sam off of him. Sam doesn’t even seem to feel it. His eyes are fever-bright and wild. He rocks barely forward, enough to make sure Dean feels his erection, and to push Dean’s down into the floor.

“We’re just playing around,” Sam pants. “I’ll let him up when he says uncle.”

“Fuck you, Sammy,” Dean says goodnaturedly. He grins over his shoulder at Jess, who blanches.

“Sam Winchester. Stop it right now,” Jess demands. She must hit the right tone, because Sam’s eyes clear and he looks a little guilty. After one more twist of Dean’s arms, Sam releases him, standing with his back to Jess. Dean scrambles up to sitting in a way that hides his hard-on. 

“Sorry,” Sam says. He’s still looking at Dean with his teeth slightly bared in a smile. He doesn’t look sorry. “We were just messing around.”

“I don’t like it,” Jess says.

“Brothers,” Dean says, shrugging. _What can you do?_ his shrug asks. 

“I’ll finish the dishes,” Sam says. “Sorry, Jess.”

“Yeah, sorry, Jess,” Dean echoes. She looks at him incredulously.

“I’ll help with the dishes,” Jess says. “Dean can make up the couch.”

It’s not even ten, but apparently the night is over. Once Dean’s dick settles down, he makes the couch up into a bed again. When he wipes the trickle of blood from his face, his hands smell like Sam. He wishes he could kiss Sam right now with blood on his lips. Sam would love it. 

Jess and Sam engage in a whispered argument while they finish the dishes. Dean gathers his papers from the printer. By the time he’s done sorting through those, the dishes are done and Sam and Jess are holding hands. Peace has apparently been made. Sam’s eyes dart to the blood smear on Dean’s face. His lips part.

“We’re heading to bed,” Jess says. “Long day tomorrow, right?” 

“Right,” Dean says. In less than twelve hours, he and Sam will be on the road. He can be patient.

“So, goodnight;” Jess adds.

“Yeah, g’night,” Dean says. “You, too, Sammy. Sleep tight.”

“Yeah, you, too,” Sam says.

Jess leads Sam to the bedroom. The door shuts behind them with a sense of finality. Dean throws himself down on the couch and exhales loudly. _Fuck._ Twelve more hours, tops. This shit is going to kill him. 

Dean gets up to shut off the lights and brush his teeth. He strips down to boxers and an undershirt. He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror. No more blood, though the bridge of his nose looks bruised. He can still feel Sam’s hands on him, Sam’s bulk pushing him into the apartment’s ugly carpet. Dean tips his head up slightly to confirm the sting under his chin is carpet burn. He’d bet money Sammy has matching marks on his elbows.

Finally, Dean goes back to the couch to lie down. He doesn’t expect sleep to come fast, but he can keep quiet for Sam’s sake. His watch, sitting on the coffee table, ticks on to eleven, then eleven thirty. The minute hand keeps moving around to eleven forty-five, and that’s when Dean hears the first sound from the bedroom. It’s Jess’s voice, but not in any way he’s heard it. Dean has had sex with a lot of people, and he knows what sex sounds like. Jess’s little breathy cries are obviously sex noises.

Dean’s dick stirs, partly from hearing her, partly from thinking about what Sam is doing to her. Whatever it is, he’s clearly doing it well. Jess’s cries get louder. Soon, a rhythmic thumping starts coming from the bedroom – the headboard hitting the wall. He can hear Sam now, too, the low rumble of his voice. He knows Sam is talking to Jess while he fucks her. He was a mouthy little shit, when he wasn’t using his mouth to cover Dean with bites and bruises. He wonders if Jess’s smooth skin is marred with the perfect half-circles of Sam’s teeth.

Jess lets out a loud, high-pitched sound, followed by Sam’s deep voice and a renewed rhythm of the pounding headboard. Suddenly, Dean can’t stand it. He’s up from the couch and hurtling into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of whiskey with shaking hands. He can’t stand hearing Sam’s sex noises from this side. His whole body aches with want. He downs his first glass of whiskey before pouring a second. He sits down at the tiny table in the dark kitchen, slowly sipping his second whiskey.

His lips are still wet when the bedroom door creaks open and soft footsteps pad through the living room. Jess moves quietly into the kitchen, dressed in her short-shorts and cropped pajama top. She opens the fridge and takes out a bottle of water. When she turns, she startles.

“Dean!” she says. “I didn’t see you.”

“It’s fine,” Dean says.

“I thought you’d be asleep.”

“Hard to sleep,” Dean says, raising an eyebrow. He can’t quite tell if she blushes, the kitchen is so dark, but he thinks she does. 

“Oh,” she says.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Sam must’ve still been pretty riled up. He sounded it.”

“You can’t have him,” Jess blurts.

“Excuse me?” Dean asks. He stands, and Jess shrinks back against the counter, even though he hadn’t moved in a particularly menacing way.

“You can’t have him,” she repeats, all in a rush. “Listen, Dean. I like you, but you can’t have him.”

“No?” Dean asks, stepping closer. He can smell Sam on her. Not just his day-to-day smell, but his musky sex smell. She smells like Sam’s sweat, like his come. She smells sweet. 

“He’s mine now,” she says. “You can borrow him, but he’s coming back to me. You can’t keep him.”

Dean steps right into Jess’s personal space. The smell of sex rolls off her in waves in time with the pulse jumping in her neck. When he puts his hand flat against her stomach, she doesn’t flinch, though her pulse and breathing both speed up. He slowly slides his hand down her belly and under the waistband of her short-shorts. She doesn’t stop him. His fingers find their way into her panties, over her silky hair, and down into the cleft between her legs. She’s still wet, with both her own slickness and Sam’s come. God, he can smell it. 

He slips his middle fingertip inside her. She clenches and shudders around him without protest. Then he slides his hand free again, out of her panties and sleep shorts. He pops his middle finger into his mouth and sucks it clean. She tastes like Sam, too. Her breath catches.

“Sammy?” Dean says, voice low and sultry. “He’s always gonna be mine.” He puts his finger in his mouth again to make a point. “You taste like him.”

“Oh, fuck,” Jess breathes. 

“You like that?” Dean asks. “You like that I know what he tastes like? You’re still so wet from him.” He brushes his hand high on Jess’s inner thigh. “He’s still dripping out of you.”

“Dean,” Jess whimpers. “You shouldn’t.”

“Yeah, but you want me to. I know what you taste like now, too.” He has her pressed back against the counter. “What you two taste like together.” 

Jess trembles, but she doesn’t seem to want to get free. She could if she wanted to. He wouldn’t stop her. He leans in close, his whiskey-wet lips close to hers. This is what it’s been building to, for good or ill. 

“Do you want to know what that tastes like, sweetheart? You and my Sammy?” Dean’s tongue darts out to touch his lower lip, and like that, Jess is kissing him. She doesn’t kiss like Sam. No teeth. She kisses like she’s trying to chase the taste in Dean’s mouth, the mix of her and Sam. Dean lets her lick into his mouth for it for a bit before reaching behind her and gathering her ass up on both hands. With a little lift and hop, she’s up on the kitchen counter.

The kitchen isn’t made for tall people, which must be a bitch for Sam when it comes to food prep, but the counter is the perfect height for Dean’s purposes. He works Jess’s shorts and panties down her hips and onto the floor. Before he can go any further, he has to drop down with his head between her legs. He lightly runs his tongue up her pussy, tasting her, tasting Sam. His tongue dips inside her for just a second. She’s velvet and heat. 

Jess tugs him up by his shoulders. Their hands scramble tougher on Dean’s boxers, shoving them down to free his dick. She opens her legs and Dean pushes into her fast and deep, slicked by Sam’s come. Jess bites down hard on her lip to stifle a cry. She’s soaked, and it’s more than just Sam. She smells more and more like herself as Dean fucks her on the counter in short, careful strokes.

“You like thinking about us,” Dean murmurs into her ear. “You like thinking about me inside him? Or him inside me?” Jess whines, then clamps her hand over her mouth. “We didn’t fuck like this, not before Stanford. Only once, that first year. The last time I saw him.”

Even muffled, Jess’s soft cries and moans are so hot. Her flush is visible in the near-dark. From the way she cants her hips, moving in little jerks, legs wrapping around Dean, he knows she’s close. 

“I fucked him,” Dean says. “He begged me to. First I sucked him, then I spread him open on his stupid twin bed in his dorm room and fucked him. I was so good to him, Jess.”

Jess’s whimpers become more insistent. Dean reaches between them to work her clit with the pad of his thumb. Her whole body trembles. Her heels dig into Dean’s back. 

“He came like that. With me inside him. Came all over both of us. Kissing me. He could taste himself in my mouth while he came.”

Jess lets out a deeper cry as he feels her coming around him, the hot, wet, tight clamp-and-flutter of her. He keeps stroking her clit with his thumb until she whines. Then he grabs her hips with his hands, holding her still as he fucks her faster. Her head rests against the cabinet, and the door rattles in time to Dean’s thrusts. She’s beautiful. She’s Sam’s. Dean still tastes them both as the tension builds in his spine. He braces himself against the counter with one hand, wrapping the other arm around Jess. A few more rapid jerks of his hips, and Dean comes inside her, eyes closing and head dropping forward to rest against her shoulder. 

He doesn’t pull out right away, but lets himself slowly soften and slide out of her. If she was wet before, she’s soaked now. She smells like every wicked thing he and Sam ever did. She also smells like herself, sweet and tangy. 

“Sweetheart, Sammy’s mine in every way that matters,” Dean says, right into her ear.  
“Dean,” Jess whispers.

“I could walk away tonight and never come back, and he’d still be mine,” Dean continues, “but I’ll share him with you.”

Jess slides off the counter onto shaky newborn-foal legs. Her slick thighs tremble as she bends to pick up her panties and sleep shorts. Dean turns away while she pulls them back on. He keeps his back turned, waiting.

“Dean,” Jess says. “What— what do we—”

“You should go back to bed,” Dean says. 

Jess huffs quietly. “We should talk about this.”

“I think I’ve talked enough,” Dean says. He places his hands, palm down, on the kitchen table, leaning his weight on them. “You want to talk, talk to Sam.”

He can tell from her sharp intake of breath that she wants to say something, but she must think better of it, because instead she quietly walks out of the kitchen. When he hears the bedroom door click closed, he drops into one of the kitchen chairs. Now he’s the one shaking, tremors running through him. What did he do? _What did he do?_ He only had to hold out for nine more hours. Dean drops his head into his hands, but quickly jerks it back up again. His hands smell like Jess, like Sam. He pours another drink.

Dean isn’t sure how much time passes before he hears the bedroom door again. He isn’t sure what he expects, but Sam coming to lean casually on the kitchen door frame isn’t it. Sam is shirtless, wearing only sweatpants. He looks at Dean for a long time without speaking. Dean has no idea what to say. Should he apologize? What did Jess tell Sam? Sam doesn’t look angry, just curious, but that doesn’t offer any insight. 

“This is stupid,” Sam finally says.

“Oh yeah?” Dean challenges.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Just come here.” With his long arms and legs, it takes him only a step to reach Dean, pulling him up from the chair by the shirt. 

“We gonna fight, Sammy?” Dean asks. He doesn’t struggle to free himself from Sam’s grip. Whatever Sam does next, Dean accepts it unconditionally. A kiss, a fist. His face is so close to Sam’s. 

“No, we’re not gonna fight,” Sam says. “I just want you to tell me why.”

“She tasted like you,” Dean says, which doesn’t really answer Sam’s question. The truth is, Dean doesn’t _know_ why, apart from how loving Sam this much makes him crazy. It’s like the two years apart left too big a space and all this mindless, animal want flooded in to fill it. 

“Now she tastes like you.” Sam leans in closer, his lips just grazing Dean’s. 

“You miss it?” Dean asks.

“You’re such an asshole,” Sam says, before he closes the remaining distance and crushes Dean’s mouth to his. He backs Dean against the kitchen wall as they kiss, hands up under Dean’s shirt, then down into Dean’s boxers, digging his thumbs into Dean’s hipbones. Sam bites at Dean’s mouth, and Dean lets him. Anything Sam wants. Anything, anything.

When Sam’s hungry mouth moves to Dean’s neck, Dean brings his hands up to bury them in his brother’s shaggy hair. He doesn’t push or pull, just twines his fingers through it. He hisses when Sam bites the edge of his jaw, moans when Sam mouths at his throat. Sam could take a bite out of Dean, and he would accept it passively. 

“Sam, Sammy,” Dean says, just to say it. 

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. He tugs up on the edge of Dean’s shirt, yanking it up until Dean is forced to untangle his fingers from Sam’s hair to let the shirt pass. The shirt lands, draping over the back of a kitchen chair. Dean cups the back of Sam’s neck with one hand until their heads rest forehead to forehead. 

“This isn’t gonna work, Sammy,” Dean says. 

“Oh yeah?” Sam asks. 

“It can’t work.” Even as Dean says it, he runs his hands down Sam’s chest to feel his smooth skin, the definition of his muscles, the hard curves of his ribs. Dean traces the line of hair disappearing into Sam’s sweatpants with his thumb. He wants to drop to his knees right there. 

“It can,” Sam insists. “It will. I’ll show you.”

“You can’t,” Dean says.

Sam goes still. He takes Dean’s head in his hands and cradles it. “Just watch me.”

The tension Dean has held for the last two years starts to melt out of him under Sam’s hands and mouth. Sam bites both collar bones, the points of Dean’s shoulders. He licks and sucks at Dean’s nipples, making him groan and grab at Sam’s hair again. Dean’s dick forgets he came less than a half hour ago. It’s ready and raring to go again. He shoves his hand down the front of Sam’s sweatpants so he can get his fingers around Sam’s dick. Sam lets out a stuttered moan and bites down on the join of Dean’s neck and shoulder, his teeth sinking in deep. 

“Fuck, Sammy,” Dean says.

Sam’s teeth graze over Dean’s left nipple again. “We should go to the bedroom,” he says.

“What about Jess?” Dean says.

“You fucked her,” Sam says. 

“Yeah,” Dean says.

“So she’s already a part of this,” Sam says. “God, I want to suck your cock.” He palms Dean’s dick through his boxers. Dean counters by jerking Sam off with slow strokes.

“Do it, then,” Dean says. Sam shakes his head.

“In the bedroom. Time to put all the pieces together.”

“You can’t have everything. World doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh yes I can,” Sam says. “Fuck, I want you in my mouth, just for a minute.”

“Yeah, yeah, c’mon, Sammy,” Dean urges. Sam slides Dean’s boxers down so his erection can spring free. Sam licks his lips. “You gonna lick her off me?”

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam says, voice rough. 

“Please, Sammy?” 

“Anything you want. You know that,” Sam says. His silky lips brush over the tip of Dean’s dick, hot puffs of breath making Dean even harder. Sam takes his time, his tongue darting out to lap at the slit, then curl around the head. His eyes flutter closed as he slowly takes Dean into his mouth like communion. His moans vibrate through Dean’s dick, making Dean’s balls draw up, too close to the end already. Nobody’s mouth feels like Sam’s. Nobody else knows exactly what Dean likes. 

“Slow, Sammy,” Dean urges. “Don’t wanna come yet.”

Sam moves slowly, taking Dean deeper in half-inch increments. When Dean bottoms out against the back of Sam’s throat, they both moan. Dean thrusts barely forward for the pleasure of making Sam choke on him, then leans back against the wall again, letting Sam take over and control the speed and depth. He submits to Sam and his grabby hands, which seem to need to touch Dean everywhere, like sucking his dick isn’t enough. Sam’s hands grab at Dean’s hips, his ass. He runs a hand down Dean’s stomach. He slips a hand underneath to cup Dean’s balls. Everything narrows down to those points of contact.

“Sam, if you want to make it to the bedroom…” Dean warns. Sam whines in frustration, but lets Dean’s dick slide out of his mouth.

“I do want that,” Sam says. “If you want that.”

“I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

Sam laughs. “I have no idea.”

“I don’t want to blow up your life,” Dean says. 

“If my life can’t handle this, then it _needs_ to blow up,” Sam says. “Come on. Come with me.” He grabs Dean by the wrist, leaving Dean to tug his boxers up one-handed. Sam leads him through the living room and the unslept-on couch. He taps lightly on the bedroom door before opening it. 

The lamps are off, but enough light spills in from the windows for Dean to see Jess sitting cross-legged on the bed in just the crop top and the panties Dean slid down her legs earlier. Her face is unreadable, to Dean at least, who doesn’t know her very well despite these past few days. 

“Hey, babe,” Sam says. He pulls Dean towards the bed. 

“Hey,” Jess breathes. “Hi.”

“So, what… what do we do?” Dean asks. “How does this work?”

“Lie down,” Sam says. Dean glances at Jess. She nods, so Dean sits on the other side of the bed. Sam gives Dean a _you’ve got to be shitting me_ look and grabs Dean by the ankle, yanking him supine. Before Dean can argue, Sam crawls on top of him. He slides his right hand into Dean’s hair—not blocking Jess’s view, Dean realizes—and then slowly lowers his mouth to Dean’s. Jess inhales sharply next to them. 

Sam doesn’t start out biting Dean, just kissing him deeply, a slide of tongue and soft lips. Soon, though, Sam nips Dean’s lower lip. Dean’s hips buck upward. What little bit of composure Sam had, he loses. The hand in Dean’s hair goes from holding to pulling, yanking Dean’s head back to expose the line of his throat. Sam buries his teeth right over Dean’s jugular, biting him hard, then pulling off to lick at the bite marks. Dean whines and squirms until he feels a soft hand on his: Jess, calming him. 

Dean looks up at Jess while Sam starts making his way down Dean’s body, pinning him to the bed with both arms as he goes, as if Dean would or could move. Sam takes the waistband of Dean’s boxers in his teeth and drags them down until Dean’s dick springs free. For some reason, Dean expects Sam to stop, to talk to Jess or something. When Sam suddenly takes Dean’s dick into his mouth, Dean lets out a ragged cry. 

“Oh,” Jess says quietly. 

Dean flips his hand over to take Jess’s hand in his. He pulls her towards him. Her hair falls around their faces like a curtain as she kisses him. The contrast between Jess’s soft, sweet lips and Sam’s hot, hungry mouth sends Dean’s eyes rolling back into his head. He clings to Jess with one hand, grabs Sam’s hair with the other. He doesn’t want to come yet. They’re going to kill him, the pair of them.

Dean has to tear his mouth away from Jess to tell Sam as much. “Shit, Sammy. You’re gonna kill me.”

Sam lifts his shaggy head and grins at Dean, white teeth and dimples visible in the dim light. “That would kind of defeat the point,” Sam says. He sits up, straddling Dean’s hips, and it’s _really_ fucking unfair that Sam’s sweatpants are still on. Dean’s dick leaves a wet circle on the fabric. Sam pulls Jess to him to kiss her. Watching Sam kiss someone else, up close like this, does something to Dean. He can see that Sam kisses Jess differently. He doesn’t bite at her mouth, but lets her set the pace. He’s careful with her in ways he never was with Dean. 

Dean enjoys the show, sure, but his dick is _right there_ with nobody paying attention to it. He bucks his hips. Sam laughs into Jess’s mouth. He takes Dean’s dick in hand and jerks him slowly. After a moment, Jess’s hand joins Sam’s. 

“Thought you weren’t tryin’ to kill me,” Dean manages between gritted teeth. 

Jess sits back on her heels. Her nose wrinkles as she smiles. The light from the window catches in her hair and illuminates it. She runs her thumb over the head of Dean’s dick and then puts her thumb in her mouth. Dean whines.

“Shh,” Sam says. He leans forward, bracing his free arm by Dean’s head. Dean’s dick and Sam’s hand are trapped between their bodies. “This is good, isn’t it? Isn’t it so good?”

Dean nods. Sam releases Dean’s dick and frees his hand. That forearm hits the bed, too, Dean’s head framed by Sam’s golden arms. Mindlessly, Dean rocks his hips up, grinding his dick against Sam’s through those stupid sweatpants. He hooks his left leg around Sam, knee pressed against Sam’s hip for better leverage. 

“Yeah, just like that,” Sam murmurs into Dean’s ear. “I missed you. I missed this.”

“You missed dry humping like high schoolers?” Dean asks. 

Sam huffs a laugh. “I missed everything. You still smell the same. You still taste the same.”

“Then taste me, or— or take your stupid sweatpants off or something, fuck,” Dean says. 

Jess shifts. Dean can only hope she’s— fuck, yes. She tugs on Sam’s sweatpants. Despite the tangle of limbs, Jess manages to get his pants off. His dick is hard and flushed dark. Dean wants it on him, in him, anywhere. He’s not particular. Sam lowers his body again. The slide of sweat-slick skin on skin almost sends Dean’s soul shooting straight out of his body. The sense memories alone could kill him. Sam’s rutting against him here in the present, on a dorm bed two years ago, in a shitty motel at eighteen. 

Fingers touch a sensitive scar on Dean’s side and he flinches away automatically. Sam stills, looking down at Dean’s face, then over at Jess. Her hand is still in midair, like she jerked it away when Dean flinched.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Does it hurt?”

“Feels weird, is all,” Dean says. Sam is staring at him again. “What?”

“That’s a new one,” Sam says quietly.

Dean nods. “Yeah.” 

“Is that… is that from a knife?” Jess asks.

“Yeah.”

“How bad?” Sam asks, all serious. He isn’t grinding against Dean anymore, which is frankly unacceptable. He puts his hand on Dean’s side, covering the scar.

“Twelve stitches. No, wait. Lucky thirteen,” Dean says.

“Jesus,” Sam hisses. “Did you go to the hospital or did Dad stitch it?”

“I don’t want to talk about Dad right now.”

“Dean!” Sam snaps. “Did you go to the hospital or did Dad—”

“Dad wasn’t there!” Dean says. “And neither were you. I stitched it up myself, just like the time before and the time after.”

“You’ve been stabbed three times?” Jess asks.

“Last one was a bite,” Dean says, too casually, apparently, because Sam unstraddles him. “Hey. Hey, come back.”

“Show me,” Sam says. 

Dean rolls his eyes and puts on his bedroom voice. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when you brought me in here, Sammy.”

“Dean.” Sam’s voice is low and dangerous.

“Fine.” Dean sits up, ignoring his flagging erection, and draws his right knee up towards his chest to bare the back of his thigh. A ragged oval of divots and raised red scars mark the skin there.

“Black dog?” Sam asks.

“Good eye,” Dean says.

“Shit, Dean, it could’ve taken your leg off,” Sam says, breathing heavily. “You were alone for that one, too?” 

“Black dog ain’t a two man job, Sam.”

“Obviously it is!”

“It was almost a year ago, Sam. Let up,” Dean says.

“That looks fresher than a year,” Sam says. 

“Fine. Like eight months,” Dean says. Sam glares at him. “Or seven. Six, I don’t know.”

“Are we counting down to a rocket launch?” Sam asks.

“Five,” Dean admits. 

“You fucking _idiot!_ ” Sam says. He hauls Dean to him and kisses him so hard their teeth knock together. He grabs at Dean’s hair, touches his face, thumbs Dean’s cheekbones: proof of life. “Do you have a death wish?”

“Out there? Without you?” Dean asks. He can’t look Sam in the eyes. His next words come out barely above a whisper. “Sometimes, Sammy.”

Sam pulls Dean into a fierce hug. Beside them, Jess makes soft, sad noises. Sam holds him for a long time, until Dean can’t stand it and has to break the tension.

“So… does this mean no sex?”

“Jerk!” Sam says, punching Dean in the shoulder. “It should.”

“But it won’t, right?” Dean asks. Jess giggles. 

“Let me look at that bite,” Sam says, and like a dutiful brother, Dean rolls onto his stomach to let Sam—and Jess—look at the bite. Soft lips and long hair brush the back of Dean’s thigh as Jess kisses the scar. Sam is less gentle, fitting his teeth into the marks as best he can. Dean’s dick fills again, throbbing against the bedspread. Sam bites just past the point of pain, then sucks at the mark, then licks it. Dean’s hands scrabble at the blanket, looking for purchase. 

“Does it hurt?” Jess asks. Dean isn’t sure if she means the bite on its own or Sam’s untender ministrations, but the answer to both is nominally the same.

“Yeah, but I don’t mind.”

Sam bites him again, harder this time, making Dean yelp with intermingled pain and pleasure. He rocks against the mattress, hands gripping the blanket. Sam’s mouth travels higher on Dean’s thigh, spreading his legs farther apart. Beside them, Jess shimmies out of her panties and top. Her breasts are pale and perfect in the low light. They brush against Dean’s arm as she leans down to kiss the corner of his mouth.

Dean doesn’t let her pull away. While Sam leaves his mark on Dean’s thighs, scuffing his stubble on the ticklish backs of Dean’s knees, Dean slides his hand up Jess’s leg. She opens her legs for him. She’s still so wet, or wet again. 

“What do you want to do, Jess?” Sam asks, lifting his head from where he’s just planted a kiss above the cleft of Dean’s ass, right over his tail bone.

“Oh!” she says, flustered suddenly. “Um.” She laughs. “Everything?”

“I want to watch you with her,” Dean says. 

“Yeah?” Sam says. “What do you want to see?”

“You said she tasted like me now,” Dean says. His voice sounds lower and rougher, even to his own ears. Jess shivers, goosebumps rippling over her skin and her nipples tightening into points. 

“You want to watch me taste her?” Sams asks, and Dean nods. Sam strokes lazy arcs across Dean’s back. “No, that’s not exactly it, is it?”

“Sammy,” Dean groans. 

“You want to watch me taste _you_ ,” Sam says. “That’s what you want.” Sam nudges Dean to roll onto his side, facing Jess, so he has room to lay her back. He touches the tip of his tongue to Jess’s belly, tracing around her navel, before grinning. “You want to watch me lick your come out of her.”

“Jesus, Sammy,” Dean all but breathes. Sam’s head dips down between Jess’s legs. He pushes her knees back, spreading her wider. Dean wants to inch down the bed to see better, but he also wants to watch Jess’s face. Sam laps at her pussy, licking her in long strokes. Dean can tell from the way Jess’s breath catches when Sam’s tongue circles her clit, and reads it in her half-closed eyes when Sam’s tongue pushes inside her. 

“Hey,” Dean says to her. He brushes a lock of blonde hair away from her face. “See? Told you we could share.”

Jess laughs and gasps and grabs Sam’s hair. Sam keeps licking her diligently, only taking a break to tell Dean, “Come here.” Dean doesn’t taste himself or Sam when Sam kisses him, just Jess’s sweet slickness. Sam’s lips are wet with it. Dean could happily keep making out with Sam, but Jess digs her toes into Sam’s ribs. 

“Hey!” she says. 

Dean lets go of Sam and grins at her. “Sorry, sweetheart. You can have him back.”

Sam dips his head between her legs again. Dean moves closer, resting his hand on Jess’s stomach. He ducks his head down to take one of her nipples in his mouth. Jess gasps. Dean sucks her nipple, flicks it lightly with his tongue, rolls it between his lips. He slides the hand on her belly lower, until he can feel the top of Sam’s head between her legs. Dean twines his fingers in Sam’s hair. 

Jess starts making short, sharp cries. Dean’s fingers tighten in Sam’s hair as Sam keeps licking and sucking Jess’s clit. As she gets louder, Dean lightly bites down on her nipple. Jess’s thighs clamp around Sam’s head, holding him in place as she comes with a final, loud cry. Jess collapses back against her pillow.

Sam lifts his head, panting and grinning. His face is dripping wet. He crawls up the bed, on top of Dean. His dick slides against Dean’s as they kiss. Feeling Jess’s eyes on them, Dean licks Sam’s face clean. He hears Jess’s moaned, “Oh fuck, that’s hot.”

“So fucking hot,” Sam agrees. He rolls to the side enough to kiss Jess, then returns to Dean, then back to Jess. It makes Dean laugh, seeing Sam trying to be one-hundred-percent present for two people at the same time.

“What’s the matter, Sammy? Are we distracting you?” Dean asks. 

“Come here,” Jess says, pulling at Sam’s shoulder, reaching for his face to turn him towards her. 

He kisses her deeply, until Dean says, “Nuh-uh. Come _here_ ,” and tugs Sam back. Jess laughs her awful, adorable snort-laugh at the bewildered look on Sam’s face as his mouth goes back to Dean’s. 

“You said you’d share!” Jess protests.

“Spoken like the girl who’s already gotten off!” Dean counters. 

Jess sits up, getting her knees under her. She leans down to kiss Dean, then elbows Sam until he surrenders his position on top of Dean. 

“Hey! No! Give him back,” Dean says. 

“You two are the worst influence on each other,” Sam complains. 

“You have no one to blame but yourself, babe,” Jess says. She swings one leg over Dean's hip and slowly lowers herself onto his dick. She’s ember-hot inside. She could burn him. Instead, she rides him. Sam quickly moves behind her, straddling Dean’s thighs, so Jess can tip her head back onto his shoulder. With Sam’s hands on her hips to guide her, Jess quickly finds the rhythm Dean loves, a slow rocking. Dean can feel Sam’s skin against his, and while Jess’s eyes are closed, her head thrown back against Sam, Sam’s eyes are wide open and watching Dean.

“Hey Sammy.” Dean manages. 

“Hey Dean,” Sam answers. He looks down at Jess, undulating against him, then back to Dean. He’s enough to stop Dean’s heart. “It happened,” Sam says. “You and me.”

Dean shakes his head. He’s been up to the edge of orgasm and back down again so many times that he feels almost drunk with it. “Yeah. Yeah, Sammy. It happened.”

“You were gone,” Sam says. “I woke up and you were gone.”

Jess might have Dean by the dick, but Sam knows just how to get into his head. _What a fucking pair_ , Dean thinks.

“You needed me gone. Your head wasn’t on straight with me there,” Dean says. “I had to go.”

“That was so stupid. Who gave you the right to do that to me?” Sam says. 

Sam. Goddamn it, but he would pick a moment Dean couldn’t get away to lay that question on him. Sam’s right hand drifts from Jess’s hip to her clit. She moans a little in protest, but then just lets out a shuddering sigh and surrenders to it. Dean can see how Sam rocks up behind her, every time she moves up and down. He pictures Sam’s dick nestled against Jess’s ass. It’s fucking distracting.

“Well?” Sam says. “You planning to answer me?”

No, Dean is not. He’s wondering if Jess would let Sam fuck her like that, take her ass while she was still riding Dean’s dick. He wonders what it would feel like to be inside her at the same time as Sam. Both are better thoughts than accounting for letting Sam down.

“Hey, Jess?” Dean asks, because two can play the ‘you can’t get away, so we’re gonna talk’ game. “You ever let Sammy put it in your ass?”

Jess grinds down hard on Dean. Sam’s eyelids flutter closed. Dean thinks he’s picturing it, too, though he could just be a little pissed off.

“That a yes or a no?” Dean says. Jess whimpers. “Oh, so it’s a special occasion thing? Valentine’s Day and anniversaries?” Jess bites her bottom lip, brows drawn together in concentration. 

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam says. “That’s not fair.” Dean ignores him and keeps talking to Jess. 

“Birthdays. Right, sweetheart? I bet you let him fuck your ass on his birthday. Aw, Sammy, please tell me she let you take her ass on your birthday.”

“Finals week,” Jess gasps. “Oh, fuck, fuck, don’t stop. It was finals week.”

“Now that’s a—fuck, sweetheart, yeah, like that—coincidence, ’cause finals week’s when he let me put it in _his_ ass,” Dean says. Jess goes off like a rocket, tightening around him, and as good as she feels, she’s still not as hot and tight as Sam was that night two years ago. That’s the thought that sends Dean racing over the edge after her. He comes so hard it hurts, snapping his hips up to drive himself deeper inside Jess. Finally, she collapses against his chest, laughing breathlessly. 

Dean looks up at Sam, looming above him. Desire crackles around Sam like static. Even with Jess on top of him, with his come leaking out of her, all Dean wants is to get his hands and mouth on Sam again. He gently rolls Jess off him. She mutters, “yeah ok,” and rolls onto her back with a satisfied sigh.

“Hey,” Dean says to Sam, reaching for his hand. Sam doesn’t move, still kneeling over Dean’s legs. Dean can feel him trembling, soft tremors vibrating through him and into Dean. 

“Dean,” Sam says, his voice breaking. Dean pulls on Sam’s hand, drawing him closer, and Sam lets himself be pulled. His dick is a hard curve, leaking against his stomach. 

“C’mere, Sammy. Let me take care of you,” Dean says. 

“You’ll still be here tomorrow, right?” Sam asks. _Fuck_ , that breaks Dean’s heart, hearing the hurt in Sam’s voice. No wonder he’s been so frantic, no wonder he’s been manic. Dean left him with a wound that didn’t couldn’t be stitched up with dental floss in a motel bathroom. No visible scar to kiss later.

“Yeah, ’cause I’ve gotta wait for you,” Dean says. “I’m waiting for your meeting, then I’m taking you with me.”

“Promise?” Sam asks. He sounds so young. 

“I swear, Sam. Now, c’mere, will you?”

Sam practically falls onto Dean, kissing, rubbing his body against Dean’s. He talks the whole time, muttering words like “God” and “missed you” and “fuck me” into Dean’s skin. 

“Would if I could, Sammy,” Dean says. “But I don’t see any lube and I’m pretty sure your girlfriend broke my dick.”

Sam laughs, loud and unselfconscious, echoed more softly by Jess. Dean rolls his brother off of him, onto his back beside Jess, and kisses his way down Sam’s chest. He nuzzles Sam’s smooth skin with his nose, breathing him in, the perfect Sam-smell of him, down his stomach and to his groin. He kisses the insides of Sam’s thighs. He nestles his head down in the space between Sam’s legs to tongue at his balls for a moment before moving back up and sucking the head of Sam’s dick into his mouth.

“Fuck,” Sam groans. “Oh, fuck. Dean.” He reaches down to touch Dean’s face, thumbing the corner of his mouth. Dean loves the feeling of it, Sam’s thumb tugging at his lip as Sam’s dick slides deeper into Dean’s mouth. He wants Sam on him, in him, around him. He wants to feel him, smell him, taste him. Sam and only Sam, forever. _And Jess, too_ , his mind dimly supplies, though right now, it’s just about Sam. 

Sam is big, and Dean is out of practice. Dean can only take him in so deep without choking, but he tries. A hand that isn’t Sam’s touches his head. He casts his eyes up to see Jess rolled onto her side, drowsily stroking his hair. She smiles and tilts her head up to kiss Sam. Dean closes his eyes and loses himself in the taste and feel of Sam, the good ache in his jaw that never completely stopped being familiar, and the strange comfort of Jess’s fingers against his scalp. 

Soon, Sam’s hips start to hitch upward. Dean grabs him by both hip bones and shoves him back down against the mattress, forcing himself to take Sam’s dick in deeper. Sam makes “ah, ah, ah” sounds into Jess’s mouth. Jess tugs encouragingly at Dean’s hair. Seconds later, Sam’s come hits the back of Dean’s throat, and he does his best to swallow it down. So it’s a little messy – it still feels just right to have Sam like this. 

When Sam is still, Dean sits back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Jess has curled up against Sam’s side with her head on his chest, her eyes drowsy and her fingers making lazy circles over his sternum. Sam’s eyes are wide open and watching Dean, like they’ve watched him for most of his life. Curious eyes that miss nothing and judge everything. If they’re judging Dean now, though, they must be favorable. Sam holds out a hand for Dean and pulls him up. Dean lays his head in the space between Sam’s arm and body, one of Dean’s arms draped over Sam’s stomach. Jess puts her hand on top of Dean’s. 

Dean closes his eyes. The bed smells like sex, like Sam, like the new smell of the three of them together. He wants to drift off in it and stay gone. Fuck the rest of the world. People out there can save their own damn selves for a change. 

“So…” Jess says, right as Dean’s about to drift off. “What’s a black dog?”

Dean groans and hides his face against Sam’s side. “You’re taking this one, Sammy. I already told her about ghosts.”

“You told her about ghosts?” Sam asks. “You asshole.”

“She hustled me at pool fair and square!” Dean says. 

“I hustled the _shit_ out of him,” Jess agrees, with more enthusiasm than Dean really thinks a woman who has had that many orgasms in one night really ought to have the energy for.

Sam sighs. “Okay. All right. I told you our mom died in a fire when I was a baby.” Jess nods. “That wasn’t exactly the whole story.”

Dean’s given plenty of civilians the talk, walked them through some aspect of the other world hidden in the shadows of their safe suburban lives. Listening to Sam give the talk to Jess is something else. Maybe Dean already primed her with the ghost thing, or maybe she’s just every bit as smart and uncanny as Dean thinks she is, but she takes it in stride. Between the two of them, Sam and Dean paint a picture of their childhood on the road, their search for the thing that killed their mother, their father’s slide into the bottle from which he never emerged. Dean thought he had given it a go with Cassie, the truth-telling thing, but the way they walk Jess through the full story – he sees now why Cassie wouldn’t believe him, not without the other half of his story there to fill in the missing pieces. 

“Okay,” Jess says, when they’ve finally finished. Dean doesn’t even want to guess how late it is, and Sam still needs to make an eight o’clock interview. Still, the kid can sleep in the car if he needs to. 

“Okay?” Sam says. “Simple as that?”

“Yeah,” Jess says.

“I gotta say it, Sammy,” Dean says. “Your girlfriend’s pretty cool.”

“Yes, I am. I’m also coming with you,” Jess says.

“That’s a bad idea,” Sam says.

“I disagree,” Jess says. She props herself up on her elbow. “You’re not leaving me here like some war bride while you go off and fight ghosts and black dogs and… what’re the ones with the gross name?”

“Rawheads,” Dean says.

“Exactly,” Jess says. “I’m coming with you. I won’t get in the way, and you can teach me what I need to know, but if you’re going, I’m going.”

“I won’t be alone. I’ll have Dean with me,” Sam says. Jess huffs.

“Plural _you_ , Sam. You and Dean. You’re not going without me. Deal with it or don’t go, take your pick, but leaving me behind isn’t one of the options.”

Dean shakes his head. “I’m not gonna say I love the idea, but I think she’s right, Sammy.”

“Do you even know how to shoot a gun?” Sam asks.

“I’m a fast learner,” Jess says. 

“All right. Case closed. Now can we all shut the fuck up and go to sleep?” Dean asks. “Somebody’s got a law school interview at ass o’clock in the morning, and we’ve still gotta get your shit packed.”

Jess leans across Sam’s chest to kiss Dean. “I’m glad I decided I liked you.”

“Yeah, me too,” Dean says. 

The three of them have to do some wiggling and maneuvering to get under the blankets, but they manage it. They fall asleep in a tangle of arms and legs. Dean sleeps, deep and dreamless, until Sam’s alarm goes off. Five solid hours of untroubled sleep and the knowledge that he won’t be making the drive to Jericho alone means Dean wakes up feeling better then he has in years. 

There’s the expected level of chaos that comes from three people waking in one bed, one of them having to get himself cleaned up and into a button-down and a tie despite the best efforts of the other two. Dean wants Sam to have a shot at this law school thing, but he also likes him naked, so it’s a battle of priorities, really. Sam gets out the door on time, though, leaving Jess and Dean behind to pack. 

Dean feels strangely pleased to see Sam still has his old duffel bag. He and Jess don’t talk much as she packs for herself and assists Dean in packing for Sam – socks, underwear, tees, a couple of musty flannel shirts shoved in the back of a drawer. All the old things that Sam used to wear on the road, plus new things, like the fancy shampoo and a jacket Dean doesn’t recognize. At least one of the tees Jess packs for Sam is purple.

He worried that things would feel weird with Jess in the light of day, but she smiles and laughs at the stories he tells her about growing up with Sam. Knowing that he doesn’t have to redact half of what happened is freeing. Dean didn’t realize how much he missed talking to someone, a peer, who had any kind of real insight into his life. 

“Grab Sam’s knives,” Dean says to Jess. 

“Sam doesn’t have knives.”

“Yeah he does. Check under his side of the mattress.”

Jess slides her hand between the mattress and box spring and comes back with a Ka-Bar and a silver stiletto. She looks down at them wide-eyed. 

“There’s this whole part of his life I didn’t know about,” she says softly. “Do I really know Sam?”

“You know the important parts,” Dean says.

“Is that going to be enough?” Jess asks.

Dean shrugs. “The sex probably doesn’t hurt.”

“Oh!” Jess exclaims, elbowing him hard in the arm. “Jerk!”

“That’s Sammy’s line. You’re gonna have to get your own, sweetheart.”

Jess sits down on the edge of the bed. Dean sits beside her. He gently takes the knives from her hands. 

“You sure you want to do this?” Dean says. “It ain’t exactly glamorous. Shitty motels, greasy diner food.”

“Plus all the stabbing,” Jess adds.

“Yeah, there’s that, too.”

“And the getting thrown through walls.”

“Jesus, lady, you don’t forget anything, do you?” Dean says.

“And the dog bites. Don’t forget those,” Jess says. “I bet I’m a mean hand at stitching somebody up with dental floss. I used to do cross-stitch with my Grandma. Can’t be that different.”

“Okay, okay,” Dean laughs. “I get it. You’re going into this with your eyes open.”

“Damn straight I am.”

“Ready to go load up the car?” Dean asks. Jess grins at him as she nods.

They’re ready to go when Sam gets back. All he has to do is change out of his interview clothes. Dean does take the opportunity to grab Sam by the tie and kiss him soundly first. Still, the day isn’t getting any younger; they need to hit the road. 

The late morning sun glints off the Impala’s hood. Jess puts on a pair of sunglasses and grins at Sam. “Shotgun.”

“Hey!” Sam protests. 

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Dean says. “Like I told you before, position of shotgun’s already officially taken.” He slides behind the steering wheel and waits for his brother and Jess to settle into their respective seats. He turns the key and the engine roars to life. “Alright, kids. Four hours to Jericho.”


End file.
